Microsoft will cut loose as many as 15K employees from its global workforce on January 15, according to unconfirmed reports that permeated the Web over the holiday break.
Bloggers at Fudzilla said in late December that mass layoffs were imminent, although a more recent post said much of the cuts would be made to agency staff, or contractors.
In an e-mail to Edge, a Microsoft spokesperson stopped short of denying the report, stating the company "does not provide comment on rumor and speculation." He did not offer any color on how the games division could possibly be affected.
However, a report from CNBC quoted an unnamed Microsoft source who said speculation surrounding the layoffs is "grossly exaggerated," although he admitted, "any company not paying careful attention to headcount in a climate like this is nuts."
Microsoft's website says the company currently employs 94,286 workers.
CNBC speculated that Microsoft's slowing browser business could be a target of further layoffs, as competition from Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Apple's Safari have taken share from Internet Explorer.
Industry watchers expect some kind of cost-cutting initiative to be announced on or before Microsoft's Q2 earnings release on January 22.
Its inevitable that big companies will be looking to lose some of its workforce. I work for an American company with about 15,000 staff worldwide and we let go of 800 towards the end of last year. Its called business.
I never thought there was such a thing as redundancy at MS, I thought they have all the money in the world to employ everyone in the world & to throw at every problem?
I'm not surprised if MS is feeling some of the effects of the global economic recession, however given MS line-up of products I would wager they are better positioned to weather it than say Sony is. Why? Because operating systems, servers, software packages, etc. are in use daily on hundreds of millions of computers and MS has a stranglehold on the operating system scene and possibly on other fronts too. Sony has neither the near monopoly on the electronics front nor does it have as potentially a large TV market as the PC related paraphenilia market does. Do I think Sony is down and out? No. Do I think MS is the better positioned company? Yes.
yeah im sure they'll soon get the halo wars treatment, "well thanks for the Mii's and Banjoo so as a special treat we're gonna close down the studio, here's your p45s"
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