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Microsoft Cuts 7,800 Jobs While Restructuring Phone Hardware Business

Nokia Microsoft Phone

Microsoft, which had 118,600 employees as of March 30, has announced that it will be laying off as many as 7,800 people across its global workforce — a cut which represents roughly 7 percent of the company’s staff — as it restructures its phone hardware business.

The company’s announcement, which was posted the morning of July 8, 2015, follows recent moves by the company to better align itself with its priorities, including changes to the company’s leadership and engineering teams, shifts in its display advertising business and its plans to transfer imagery acquisition operations over to Uber.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was quoted in the announcement as having said that the company is aligning its engineering efforts and capabilities in order “to deliver on our strategy and, in particular, our three core ambitions,” adding that the change will “enable” the company to “deliver better products and services” at an expedited pace.

We are aligning our engineering efforts and capabilities to deliver on our strategy and, in particular, our three core ambitions (…) This change will enable us to deliver better products and services that our customers love at a more rapid pace.

Following the company’s restructuring – which will result in the loss of Stephen Elop, Kirill Tatarinov and Eric Rudder — the company’s senior leadership team will consist of just 12 executives.

Unrelated to the restructuring changes, Chief Insights Officer Mark Penn will be leaving the company in September in order to pursue another venture outside of the company.

The newly formed team, known as the Windows and Devices Group (WDG), is intended to focus on the spread of Windows across personal computing platforms, with executive VP Terry Myerson leading the newly formed team.

Business Insider reports that as a result of the layoffs, the company will incur a $7.6 billion impairment charge this quarter — a charge which pertains to the company’s 2014 acquisition of Nokia’s smartphone business, which it acquired for $7.9 billion.

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