Microsoft on Wednesday took the axe to what little remains of its smartphone business, announcing a fresh round of redundancies and yet another impairment charge.
Last year Microsoft wrote off $7.6bn and cut 7800 jobs. However, the deal never seemed to provide the much-needed fuel for Microsoft to catch market Apple and Google, who both lead the market with their iOS and Android devices.
"We are focusing our phone efforts where we have differentiation", Nadella said in the statement.
Increasingly, companies are procuring phones for employees rather than letting workers bring their own devices onto corporate networks, said International Data Corp. analyst John Delaney.
"Feature phones" are basic phones that focus on text and voice calling as opposed to smartphones that have expanded capabilities.
Nokia, now focused on telecom network equipment, just last week said it was cutting around 1,000 jobs in Finland following its acquisition of Franco-American rival Alcatel-Lucent. Meanwhile Microsoft has sold off entry level feature phone business to FIH Mobile Ltd for $350 million recently. Ballmer had faced significant resistance internally for his plan to acquire Nokia, and Nadella was initially against the move into smartphones.
Whether this commitment to Windows Mobile is worthwhile if the operating system's market share steadfastedly refuses to rise above one or two per cent is something Nadella will have to address in the next few years. The extra dialogue "confirms the time of the scheduled upgrade and provides the customer an additional opportunity for cancelling or rescheduling the upgrade", explained a Microsoft spokesperson.
As you might guess, many of those Finish jobs are held by ex-Nokia folk, many from the design and manufacturing teams you might need if you planned to recover from the business' death spiral. The only glimmer of hope for Microsoft in mobile hardware appears to be the long rumored Surface branded smartphone; however, given its track record thus far, the company will have a challenging road ahead.
"It's a Windows phone", he said as the audience laughed. But Nokia, once the global leader in mobile phones, withered on Microsoft's watch.
Source: Windows Phone's gutting continues as Microsoft lays off hundreds of Nokia veterans
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