Satya Nadella (Photo : Reuters)
Just one year after acquiring Nokia's handset division, Microsoft writes off $7.6 billion of the deal and announces it is cutting 7,800 jobs primarily in the phone division.
Majority of the job cuts will come from international offices mainly in Brazil and Finland. According to Los Angeles Times, at least 129 employee from Microsoft's San Diego office will be part of the job cut as well. The San Diego layoff will see the departure of 28 senior software development engineers, 18 senior program managers and seven senior hardware engineers, based on a state filing submitted by Microsoft.
Microsoft will be laying off around 6 percent of its workforce in the latest job cut. Nokia CEO Stephen Elop and Nokia head of phones Jo Harlow both left Microsoft in June.
In a letter sent to all his employees in June, Nadella gave a vague warning of "tough choices in areas where things are not working." It appears that the recent job cut is the manifestation of this warning.
Following the job cut, Nadella sent an internal e-mail to its employees saying "We are moving from a strategy to grow a standalone phone business to a strategy to grow and create a vibrant Windows ecosystem including our first-party device family."
According to The Telegraph, the recent job cut from Microsoft's hardware division means that the company is gearing towards a future focused mainly on selling software. Microsoft is slowly incorporating its software into a broader market and as well as integrating it into rivals' devices.
Microsoft will release Windows 10 on July 29, the company's operating system since 2012 when it launched the Windows 8. The launch of Windows 10 will play a critical role in the overall success of Microsoft, some industry analysts say.
