Posted on 07/17/2014 7:20:46 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
SEATTLE — Microsoft said Thursday that it planned to eliminate up to 18,000 jobs over the next year in a shake-up intended to help the company move more quickly in the market.
The cuts are the largest in the company’s 39-year history, representing about 14 percent of its work force.
Microsoft will make the deepest cuts from the businesses it acquired from the Finnish phone maker Nokia. About 12,500 of the jobs being eliminated will come from the Nokia groups, resulting from the closing of a factory in Hungary and other changes.
That is about half the number of employees who joined Microsoft from Nokia a few months ago when it completed its acquisition of the company’s mobile business. In related news, Microsoft said it would no longer make Nokia phones based on the Android operating system, switching its low-end phones to Microsoft’s Windows Phone software.
Microsoft said it would take a charge of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion to cover severance and related costs from the layoffs over the next year.
The company’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, signaled in a company memorandum last week that big organizational changes were coming soon.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hold on to your hats, Folks; the party’s over.
From ZERO HEDGE:
And now, back to MSFT stock which surges on the news and lifts the market to recorder highs even as thousands more end up on the street, which has largely been the whole story of the “recovery” to date.
I noticed that most of these layoffs will not be happening in King county, but I wonder if Microsoft’s footprint in that area will, over time, drastically shrink.
On a side note, I moved From Seattle to a small town in central KY in 2011. Everyone who finds out I’m from Seattle things I work for Amazon because they have a very large distribution center here. I don’t.
Globally the growth in smartphones has already begun to diminish due to market saturation. In China, which has bee one of the fastest-growing markets and where 9 out of 10 phones is a smartphone, Nokia only had a 3$ share and was shrinking.
There will be continued consolidation within the Android camp, and Apple will remain a strong competitor. But there will never be a three-way race with Windows having a significant share, it's way too late for that.
3% not 3$, damn fingers...
I went through the downsizing process with IBM several years back. It is not a very up lifting experience.
I liked the bit with Ballmer yelling at the board of directors and Gates to get them to buy Nokia. http://blogs.computerworld.com/management/23617/steve-ballmers-temper-tantrum-over-nokia-buyout-led-his-firing-says-report
Heh...Ballmer...
One thing that is clear about guys like Jobs, Ellison, or Gates in the beginning, is that they were visionaries. Ballmer is not, and I guess the verdict is still out on Tim Cook. They did not build these companies on the basis of screaming at their Boards to do deals that stunk, or on the basis of some secret leadership sauce. They turned ideas into products that people saw great value in, and that’s still the formula. I just can’t see Microsoft returning to the model that made it what it is.
Balmer had enough walking around money to bid 2 billion for the Clippers.
This is what happens when you stop listening to your customers.
Shedding crocodile tears as I read about this on my Linux computer! LOL!
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