Microsoft has announced that it will lay off 1.850 employees and a union from Finland called it the end of smartphone manufacturing for Microsoft, who acquired it from Nokia.
“Microsoft Corp. on Wednesday announced plans to streamline the company’s smartphone hardware business, which will impact up to 1,850 jobs,” it said in a statement, adding 1,350 of those jobs would be eliminated in Finland where its smartphones have been designed. The other 500 jobs will be cut “globally.”
Microsoft had acquired Nokia in 2014 at a value of $7.2 billion but it could not sustain in the smartphone business because Windows phones turned out to be a flop across the globe. A week ago Microsoft announced the sale of its feature phone business for $350 million (310.5 million euros) to a new Finnish company HMD Global and its Taiwanese partner, FIH Mobile of FoxConn Technology Group, which will jointly begin manufacturing handsets and tablets under the Nokia brand again.
Nokia was the biggest brand in the mobile market from 1998 to 2011. In the last quarter Microsoft sold close to 2.4 million Windows phone, which is 0.7 per cent market share overall in the globe.
By Atanu Kumar Das
