Technology

Posted on July 29, 2016 by staff

Microsoft to lay off 2,850 more staff

Technology

Microsoft will lay off an additional 2,850 employees, many of them salespeople, in the next 12 months.

The tech giant laid off 7,400 employees in the last financial year including 1,850 from its struggling smartphone business.

1,350 of those were in Finland working at the former Nokia headquarters while others were part of the sales team.

In a report filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft stated: “In addition to the elimination of 1,850 positions that were announced in May 2016, approximately 2,850 roles globally will be reduced during the year as an extension of the earlier plan, and these actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal year 2017.”

COO Kevin Turner also departed the company in the last fiscal year, while it announced last month that it is to buy professional social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion.

Microsoft was aiming to get its ‘final’ operating system Windows 10 on to a billion devices by 2018 but revised that goal as its Windows phone business nosedived.

Less than three per cent of smartphones have the Windows operating system.

A month ago Microsoft announced that Windows 10 is now on 350 million devices.

The free upgrade ends today (Friday 29th July), exactly a year after it was introduced, and will cost £99.99 for the home version and £189.99 for the professional version from Saturday.

Microsoft intends Windows 10 to be its final OS, with updates arriving from time to time as it moves to a Software as a Service model.