The disclosure came in the company’s annual report, filed Thursday. The company said the cuts would come in its smartphone hardware operation and in sales team that supported that business.
Microsoft plans to lay off 2,850 people during the company’s current fiscal year, new cuts partly related to the company’s troubled smartphone hardware business.
The disclosure came in the company’s annual report, filed with regulators on Thursday. A Microsoft spokeswoman said the cuts would fall on smartphone hardware roles and sales teams, as well as the company’s global sales business in a reorganization following the departure of Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. Nine hundred layoffs have already been completed in the company’s sales unit.
Microsoft declined to comment on the location of the employees.
A majority of those being laid off have already been notified, a spokeswoman said. Microsoft’s fiscal year — the window in which Microsoft said the layoffs would be completed — ends in June 2017.
Most Read Business Stories
Microsoft employed 114,000 people at the end of June, about 44,400 in Washington state, the company says.
The latest cuts follow Microsoft’s announcement in May that the company would lay off 1,850 people, and take a $950 million restructuring charge, as a result of its decision to scrap much of the phone hardware business it bought from Nokia in 2014.
The bulk of that round of layoffs, about 1,350, would be centered in Finland, Nokia’s home base, Microsoft said at the time.
Microsoft bought the hardware business from the Finnish technology pioneer for $7.9 billion, acquiring factories in the Americas, Europe, and Asia, development centers in Finland, and bringing on 25,000 employees. The acquisition was designed to jumpstart Microsoft’s flagging Windows Phone business, which was vying to create a third major smartphone operating system alongside Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
But analysts said the company didn’t fundamentally change its strategy, and the business continued to lose money.
Layoffs followed, including the company’s largest-ever cut — 18,000 workers — announced in July 2014. That cutback, representing 14 percent of the company’s workforce at the time, was focused on the long-troubled phone operation, involving 12,500 professional and factory jobs that mainly had been former Nokia positions.
More phone-related layoffs were announced the next year, and Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella signaled the company was abandoning its ambitions to be a major smartphone maker.
The restructuring charges and asset writedowns related to the soured Nokia deal have topped $10 billion.