Microsoft is closing Nokia’s product development facility in Salo, Finland, as part of its global cost-cutting programme, it emerged on Friday.
Reuters reports that the U.S.-based software giant will make 2,300 Finnish staff redundant. Its two remaining sites in the country – one in Espoo, the other in Tampere – will stay open.
On 8 July, Microsoft announced a $7.6 billion writedown on its Nokia hardware assets and warned that 7,800 jobs would be cut worldwide. That haircut was trimmed slightly to $7.5 billion when the company published its fiscal fourth quarter results later that month.
When Microsoft acquired Nokia’s phone business in September 2013 it paid $7.2 billion.
Since then, the company has struggled to woo consumers away from Android or Apple’s iOS to Windows Phone.
Microsoft shipped 8.4 million Lumia smartphones in the three months 30 June, up from 7.5 million a year earlier. By comparison, Apple shipped 47.5 million iPhones.
Meanwhile, Microsoft’s reorganisation, which is expected to generate costs of $750 million-$850 million, came three weeks after the abrupt departure of devices chief and one-time Nokia CEO Stephen Elop as part of an executive reshuffle.
Under the new structure, Microsoft’s phone business forms part of the newly-created Windows and Devices Group (WDG), which is under the remit of the company’s OS chief Terry Myerson.
