Microsoft announces 18000 layoffs: 15% record of total staff

Microsoft announced in Thursday that it plans to cut a maximum of 18,000 employees this year, the biggest job cut in Microsoft's history because it is digesting deals to buy Nokia handsets and repositioning itself to suit future growth. After completing a deal to buy the Nokia mobile phone business in April this year, Microsoft employs about 127104 people, meaning that the downsizing is equivalent to nearly 15% of the total number of employees. Microsoft said that for the time being, the company is in the process of laying off 13,000 people, most of which will be done in the next six months and in the next 12 months. Of these, about 12,500 employees will come from Nokia's equipment and services sector, roughly half the total number of employees in the department. The maximum number of layoffs is likely to reach 18,000. The company said it expects severance payments and other spending in the next four quarters to reach $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion trillion. For Microsoft, the layoffs show that the company and its new chief executive, Satia Nadra Satya Nadella, once again admitted that Microsoft was determined to make tough decisions to improve its position in the technology sector. In a Thursday email to employees, Nadra said: In order to achieve our volunteer, we need to build the company in the right way, and the first step is to reconfigure the company's workforce. It is important to note that while we are downsizing in some areas, new staff are being recruited in other strategic areas. My commitment to you is that we will complete this process in the most prudent and transparent manner possible. Over the years, Microsoft had attracted the ire of antitrust regulators for a time when it was dominated by excessive market dominance; But today, Microsoft has fallen to third place in the market for overall computing devices-PCs, mobile phones and tablets-and the gap between the top two is huge. At the Microsoft partners ' meeting last week, Microsoft's slide show showed that the company accounted for only 14% of the overall computing market. Also last week, Nadra outlined his view in a 3100-word memo, pointing out that Microsoft must make changes in the corporate culture and product development approach. The day I took over my new job, I said that the industry we live in does not respect tradition, but respect innovation. Nadra wrote in the memo. I also said that in order to speed up the pace of innovation, we have to rediscover our own soul, which is our unique core. One question the market now wants to know is whether this wave of layoffs will help Microsoft speed up change or create more uncertainty. In the case of a product detail, Nadra said the company would switch some of its Android-based Nokia X products to windows-based products. At the beginning of 2009, Microsoft's Ballmer CEO, influenced by the global recession,TeVe Ballmer has laid off 5800 people in the company, accounting for about 6% of the company's total staff. Nadra's restructuring plan aims to help Microsoft move from a company dedicated to the software business to companies that sell online services, applications, and equipment, allowing ordinary users and business users to boost productivity. It needs to build Microsoft into the dominant mobile-centric computing age, Google (Weibo), and Apple's more feared rival. Nadra last week declined to say whether the company would lay off staff, saying he would disclose more information on July 22, when the fourth financial quarter was released. However, the source said, Microsoft will also be among software testers to lay off staff. Microsoft is also the latest technology company to cut corporate spending through layoffs. Earlier, the company announced layoffs in May this year after a 11 consecutive quarterly decline in HP's revenues. Meg Whitman, Hewlett-Packard's chief executive, said she would Whitman 50,000 more employees after 34,000 jobs were cut. IBM is also currently balancing jobs. This means that about 13,000 IBM employees will be cut or transferred to their new owners, market analysts said. Both Intel and Cisco said last year that they were starting to lay off about 5%. Related reading: Microsoft announces to abandon Nokia X Android product line merged into Lumia series Microsoft has laid off 1100 people in Finland