14 DAY TRIAL // Back in 2014, when Microsoft completed the acquisition of Nokia’s Devices and Services unit, the software giant also took over stores that previously belonged to the Finnish mobile phone maker, so it started a global effort of rebranding or closing these locations as part of its internal reorganization.
The flagship Nokia store in Finland, which became a Microsoft store in November 2014, was closed on May 1, with sales in the country to now take place via authorized resellers or straight through the company’s online MicrosoftStore.com store.
The store employed 15 people and all of them lost their jobs, officials of Microsoft Finland confirm.
18,000 employees affected by the job cut
As part of the Nokia takeover, Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella announced a massive job layoff in the summer of 2014 in order to incorporate the purchased division into its own flow chart and streamline the process of creating new mobile solutions as part of the Microsoft brand.
A total of 18,000 people got laid off in several rounds throughout the year, with both CEO Satya Nadella and Stephen Elop, head of the Microsoft Devices unit, explaining that all plans would be as transparent as possible to make sure that the restructuring process would be successfully completed.
“The team transferring from Nokia and the teams that have been part of Microsoft have each experienced a number of remarkable changes these last few years. We operate in a competitive industry that moves rapidly, and change is necessary. As difficult as some of our changes are today, this direction deliberately aligns our work with the cross company efforts that Satya has described in his recent emails,” Elop said.
In the meantime, Microsoft is working to open new stores in non-US locations, but right now there are no details as to what the company plans to do in Europe, so chances to see official Microsoft stores on the Old Continent in the next couple of years are pretty small.