Microsoft to axe 15,000 jobs this January

The world's top software firm, Microsoft, is planning a massive reduction in its workforce where up to 15,000 jobs may be axed this month, says a media report.

"Microsoft is preparing to announce the first wide scale layoffs in its 32-year history, with up to 15,000 jobs at risk, according to some predictions," The Times said in a report published online.

Speculation about job cuts was triggered by a report by Fudzilla, a technology blog site, which said employees were told that the software group was preparing for major layoffs from its global operations on January 15, it added.

Earlier, a brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co's analyst Brad Reback had asked Microsoft to cut its workforce by 10% or about 9,100 employees.

"Such layoff exercise "would be a healthy move for the company," Reback added. Microsoft had close to 91,000 employees on its payrolls at end of July-September quarter.

Further, The Times report stated that the news of job losses came amid the company being forced to apologise for an embarrassing hiccup with its Zune digital music player.

A bug in the device's internal clock in the original 30-gigabyte version failed to cope with the last day of the leap year and thousands of owners were left with a frozen screen on December 31.

The report quoted Microsoft statement as saying, "the issue should be resolved over the next 24 hours as the time change moves to January 1, 2009. We expect the internal clock on the Zune 30 GB devices will automatically reset."

Besides, Microsoft is scheduled to release its second quarter results for the fiscal year 2008-09 on January 22.

Battling the economic crisis, companies in their bid to save costs, have announced over one lakh job cuts in December in the US.

Source: Agencies

Microsoft advised to lay off over 9,000 employees

The world's top software firm Microsoft has been asked to cut its workforce by 10 per cent, or about 9,100 employees, to tell the market that profits are more important than revenue growth in difficult times.

Brokerage firm Oppenheimer & Co's analyst Brad Reback has said in a report on Microsoft that such layoff exercise "would be a healthy move for the company."

The move would be well received by the market and would "signal that profitability is more important than revenue growth during this very difficult time," Reback added.

Calling for a 10 per cent reduction on the company's payrolls, Reback said in his report for the institutional investors of Microsoft that this would result in an approximately 10 per cent gain in its earnings per share.

The software giant had close to 91,000 employees on its payrolls at the end of July-September quarter.

Earlier in October, Microsoft had put in place a hiring freeze on some of its divisions, such as entertainment and devices businesses that make products like X-Box and Zune.

There have been some unconfirmed reports on blogs that the company would announce some major layoffs in the first month of 2009.

Microsoft is scheduled to release its second-quarter results for the fiscal year 2008-09 on January 22.

Battling the economic crisis, companies in their bid to save costs, have announced more than one lakh job cuts in the month of December alone in the US, while so far in 2008 there have been close to 20 lakh layoffs.

Source: Agencies