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Microsoft Is Laying Off 1,850 to Streamline Its Smartphone Business (theverge.com)
Microsoft is making more changes to its smartphone business. The company, which sold its feature phone business last week, on Wednesday announced that it is scaling back hardware -- laying off 1,850 staff and take a charge of $950 million including $200 million in severance payments in a memo to all employees. The company insists that "great new devices" are in the works. From Myerson's memo: Last week we announced the sale of our feature phone business. Today I want to share that we are taking the additional step of streamlining our smartphone hardware business, and we anticipate this will impact up to 1,850 jobs worldwide, up to 1,350 of which are in Finland. These changes are incredibly difficult because of the impact on good people who have contributed greatly to Microsoft. Speaking on behalf of Satya and the entire Senior Leadership Team, we are committed to help each individual impacted with our support, resources, and respect. For context, Windows 10 recently crossed 300 million monthly active devices, our Surface and Xbox customer satisfaction is at record levels, and HoloLens enthusiasts are developing incredible new experiences. Yet our phone success has been limited to companies valuing our commitment to security, manageability, and Continuum, and with consumers who value the same. Thus, we need to be more focused in our phone hardware efforts.
Yet nobody gets upset at Apple for forcing OS upgrades, or Google/Cell phone carriers for forcing OS upgrades on their phones. Everybody loves to whine but MS is just adopting the same model of OS upgrades as their competitors have had for years.
Excuse me, COWARDLY shill; but Apple NEVER forces an Upgrade. NEVER.
My iPad 2 is still running iOS 7. It COULD be running iOS 9.x; but I don't want to upgrade. So I don't.
My MacBook Pro is running OS X 10.9.5 (Mavericks). It COULD be running OS X 10.11.4 (El Capitan); but I don't want to upgrade. So I don't.
Up until yesterday, my iPhone 6 plus was running iOS 8.4; I finally saw something in iOS 9 that I thought was interesting, so I upgraded to iOS 9.3.2. But nothing and nobody forced me to.
Get your facts straight, MS Shill.
Slashdot's moderation is hilariously and unsurprisingly broken. Any defense of Microsoft gets flagged as trolling or flamebait, even when it's just a list of true facts.
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