Microsoft cuts 18,000 jobs, about 14% of the company's 125,000 employees

Most of the latest round of layoffs -- 12,500 -- will come from Nokia's devices and services business that Microsoft recently bought. In a memo to Microsoft's staff, Nadella said that Microsoft found many redundancies between the two companies, including both professional and factory workers.

But Microsoft is also cutting 5,500 other jobs at the company. As part of the company's new strategy, which Nadella outlined in a separate memo to employees last week, Microsoft will focus intently on improving its mobile and cloud productivity software, including Office 365, Windows Phone, Windows Azure, Skype, OneDrive and Bing.

Nadella said the first 13,000 job cuts would come in the next six months, and Microsoft said it expects the layoffs to cost the company up to $1.6 billion over the next year. Microsoft's shares were up more than 2% in premarket trading.

MORE....
[link to money.cnn.com]