Microsoft has announced that it will be cutting as many as 18,000 jobs. The Redmond based company was recorded as having 127,104 employees in its workforce (globally). But now, under-performance of the Nokia Lumia series of phones, which runs Microsoft’s Window’s Phone OS, has meant that a total of 18,000 jobs are going to be cut.

In fact, the Nokia Devices and Services Division behind the Lumia series - which Microsoft acquired back in September 2013 for £4.6bn - is seeing 12,500 jobs cut of the total 18,000. To put that into perspective, when Nokia fell under Microsoft’s, umbrella 32,000 employees transitioned to Microsoft, meaning almost half of the positions in the division is being axed.

Employees were notified by this letter from CEO Satya Nadella, where he states that: “It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic area […] My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.”

Interestingly, the letter made no mention of the performance of the Xbox brand or the Xbox One, which last we checked, had sold 5m units globally. However, another letter from Stephen Elop (Microsoft’s Devices group and former chief of Nokia) stated there would only be “limited change” with regards to Xbox. He went on to say that: “With a set of changes already implemented earlier this year in these teams, this means there will be limited change for the Surface, Xbox hardware, PPI/meetings or next generation teams.”

Our thoughts go out to all of those affected by the restructuring. We’ll let you know more as we receive it.

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Shehzaan Abdulla

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Shehzaan grew up playing SEGA consoles and has a soft spot for retro games seeing as he was playing the Master System his parents bought him when all his friends had Playstations (this was also around the same time he realized he was probably adopted).

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