Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it will slash up to 18,000 jobs, or 14 percent of its workforce, this year as it trims its newly acquired Nokia phone business and reshapes itself into a cloud-computing and mobile-friendly software company.
About 12,500 of the layoffs will come from eliminating overlaps with the Nokia unit, which Microsoft acquired in April for $7.2 billion. Microsoft did not say how many jobs would come from Nokia and how many from existing operations.
Microsoft did not detail exactly where the remaining jobs would be cut, but said the first wave of layoffs would affect 1,351 jobs in the Seattle area.
Microsoft is not alone among the pioneers of the personal computer revolution now slimming down to adapt to the Web-focused world.
PC-maker Hewlett-Packard Co is in the midst of a radical three-to-five-year plan that will lop up to 50,000 from its staff of 250,000.
International Business Machines Corp IBM.N is undergoing a “workforce rebalancing,” which analysts say could mean 13,000, or about 3 percent of its staff, being laid off or transferred to new owners as units are sold.
Chipmaker Intel Corp and network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc both said in the past year they were cutting about 5 percent of their staffs.
