Microsoft to Lay off Another 1,850 Nokia People as it Prepares for $950 Million Hit

Microsoft Campus
The Visitor’s Center at Microsoft Headquarters campus is pictured July 17, 2014 in Redmond, Washington. (Stephen Brashear/Getty Images)

Microsoft has pushed on with its lay off of Nokia services, and many people are going to feel the effects of the sour partnership. The company decided to streamline the smartphone business and announced that because of that they would lay off close to 1,850 people worldwide. 1,350 of those people will come from Finland alone, and the other 500 will be from other countries. The move is reported to cost Microsoft $950 million and also is said to be the end of the Nokia Lumia version phones that were powered by Microsoft.

When Microsoft and Nokia announced their partnership back then, high aspirations and hopes were placed on the two, but everything has gone south, and it has proved to be nothing but a fruitless partnership.  After the purchase Microsoft slowly but surely started removing all logo which had Nokia on them and now they are finally putting the final in the coffin for the once-popular phone maker. Microsoft recently announced its deal with Foxconn to sell the feature phone business for about $350 million. However, the company is expected to make Nokia smartphones with Android operating system together with Nokia and one other newly formed company. They also plan to make tablets.

After all is said and done, the Microsoft-Nokia partnership was nothing but a big failure. The company was said to have purchased Nokia and its patents together for $7.1 billion. July last year saw the company announce its plans to layoff 7,800 people from the company, and it also took an impairment charge of about $7.6 billion. That figure plus the $950 million that they will lose now and you can see the losses that the partnership brought for the company.

Rumors around are saying that Microsoft is thinking of making a new Surface phone, but no one knows at the moment. The Executive Vice President of the Windows and Devices Group, Mr. Terry Myerson said that the company was planning on focusing on the phone efforts and declared that the company was only drawing a foot back but was not going to entirely back out. He also said that the company was planning on developing some great devices, but it’s unclear what that meant.

After all this, one thing is for sure, the Microsoft phone making business has not been as fruitful as needed, and it is coming to a halt at the moment, for the time being.