By Ovunc Kutlu
NEW YORK (AA) – Microsoft announced Wednesday that it will cut 1,850 jobs at its smartphone division, dealing a third blow to its phone sector.
The company said it in a statement that the layoffs will cost $950 million but it noted that it will resume focusing on mobile platforms.
“We will continue to innovate across devices and on our cloud services across all mobile platforms,” Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in the statement.
About 1,350 of the layoffs are expected to come from the company’s mobile office in Finland.
In 2013, the tech giant acquired the Finnish tech company, Nokia, for $7.2 billion, with 32,000 Nokia employees joining Microsoft in the deal.
But Microsoft laid off 18,000 employees the following year, most from its Nokia unit. And the company trimmed an additional 7,800 jobs last July with most of the cuts again coming from its smartphone division.
Microsoft has a global workforce of 110,000 employees.
