Seattle: Microsoft Corp said on Thursday it would cut up to 18,000 jobs, or about 14 per cent of its workforce, as it halves the size of its recent Nokia acquisition and trims down other operations.
The company said it will take pre-tax charges of $1.1 billion to $1.6 billion for the costs of the layoffs over the next four quarters.
Nadella's cuts are set to be the biggest at the Redmond, Washington-based company since his predecessor Steve Ballmer axed 5,800, or about 6 percent of headcount at that time, in the depths of recession in early 2009.
The new CEO's move is designed to help Microsoft shift from being a primarily software-focused company to one that sells online services, apps and devices that it hopes will make people and businesses more productive. Nadella needs to make Microsoft a stronger competitor to Google Inc and Apple Inc, which have dominated the new era of mobile-centric computing.
Marking this change of emphasis, Nadella last week rebranded Microsoft as "the productivity and platform company for the mobile-first and cloud-first world."
Microsoft is not alone among the pioneers of the personal computer revolution that are now slimming down as they 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 of its 250,000 staff.
International Business Machines 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.
Chip maker Intel Corp and network equipment maker Cisco Systems Inc both said in the past year they are cutting around 5 percent of their staff.PAGE_BREAK
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