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The
U.S. company said it would shed up to 1,850 jobs, most of them
in Finland, and write down $950 million from the business. It
did not say how many employees currently work on smartphones in
the group as a whole.
A Finnish union representative told Reuters the cuts would
essentially put an end to Microsoft's development of new phones.
"My understanding is that Windows 10 will go on as an operating
system, but there will be no more phones made by Microsoft,"
said Kalle Kiili, a shop steward.
Microsoft said in a statement it would continue to develop the
Windows 10 platform and support its Lumia smartphones, but gave
no comment on whether it would develop new Windows phones.
Microsoft bought Nokia's <NOKIA.HE> once-dominant handset
business for about $7.2 billion in 2014, but failed to turn the
business around and last year announced $7.5 billion of
writedowns and 7,800 job cuts.
Global market share of Windows smartphones fell below 1 percent
in the first quarter of 2016, according to research firm
Gartner.
Earlier this month, Microsoft sold its entry-level feature
phones business for $350 million.
The company said on Wednesday it expected to cut all 1,350 jobs
at its Finnish mobile phone unit and close down a research and
development site in the country. A further 500 jobs will go in
other countries, it said, without giving details.
"We are focusing our phone efforts where we have
differentiation," said chief executive Satya Nadella in a
statement.
"We will continue to innovate across devices and on our cloud
services across all mobile platforms."
(Reporting by Jussi Rosendahl and Tuomas Forsell; Editing by
Ruth Pitchford and Mark Potter)
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