Microsoft ‘to slash some 3,000 jobs’

Microsoft Corp said on Thursday that it was cutting an unspecified number of jobs amid reports the US tech giant was reorganising its global sales operations.

“Today, we are taking steps to notify some employees that their jobs are under consideration or that their positions will be eliminated,” Microsoft said in an email response to an AFP inquiry.

Earlier, CNBC television said the company would be cutting some 3,000 positions, mostly from its non-US sales staff.

Microsoft had more than 121,000 employees worldwide at the end of March, according to its website.

Global Equities research analyst Trip Chowdhry saw lay-offs such as those taking place at Microsoft as symptoms of a technology industry undergoing a “major overhaul” caused by a shift to computing and online services being hosted in the internet cloud.

“This is not the end,” he predicted. “At companies transitioning from the old world to the new world you will see lay-offs accelerate; it’s a slow and gradual and painful experience for them.”

“With super-cloud computing platforms, resources can be focused on refining and supporting a single version of operating software instead of versions released every year or so to be installed on machines in homes or businesses,’’ Chowdhry reasoned.

“You look at Microsoft, and you realise that certain things that worked in the past are not gong to be relevant in the future,” he said.

Microsoft has been shifting to a cloudbased model under chief executive Satya Nadella, as the industry moves away from packaged software that once was the core of its business.

Microsoft said revenue from its “Intelligent Cloud” rose 11% from a year earlier to $6.8 billion.

The company is to release its earnings for the recently-ended quarter on July 20.

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft has announced thousands of jobs cuts in recent years, the most severe being 18,000 positions eliminated in 2014 related to its acquisition of Nokia Oyj’s devices and services business and failed efforts in the smartphone market.

The techn giant cut 7,800 jobs in 2015, and 4,700 last year.