The company bought Nokia's mobile phone business in 2014 but has failed to make it profitable. In the same year, the company dismissed 1,050 of Nokia's employees in the Finnish towns of Salo and Oulu and shut down the Oulu product development unit. This decision was followed by last year's move to axe another 2,300 jobs in Salo, Tampere and Espoo.
In a way, yesterday's decision to pull the plug, dubbed as a "terminal care program" by the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, was expected, as Microsoft was struggling to make its Nokia unit profitable, and had to gradually shut down some of its operations in the country. Ironically, the bad news was broken just days after Nokia unveiled plans for a radical comeback to the mobile market.Still, Microsoft's failure is all but an ordinary one, argued Linus Larsson of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
"A technology company which is unable to stay relevant as the world progressively moves to mobile phones, is doomed to fall behind in the whole consumer segment," he wrote.
In this aspect, the company's aggressive bet on Windows smartphones and the multi-billion dollar purchase of Nokia are understandable. The idea was to stay in the game and thwart fierce competition from Google and Apple. This hasn't made Nokia's ultimate defeat any less difficult to bear for the computer giant or Finland itself, which once prided itself as home to the world's top provider of mobile phones. Nokia sold its billionth phone in 2005, and at its peak in 2007 commanded 41 percent of the global handset market, according to CNET.Microsoft's Finnish adventure has left a large mess to clean up. Finland's Minister of Economic Affairs Olli Rehn and Minister of Justice and Labor Jari Lindström defined the situation as "extremely difficult."
"In just a few years thousands of workers in the information and communications technology sector have lost their jobs," the ministers stated to Finland's national broadcaster Yle.
Microsoft had been gradually curtailing thousands of workers from its payroll ever since it acquired Nokia's phone business, leaving Finland with a bleeding wound of several thousand jobless professionals.
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