Microsoft said Friday that it had concluded retrenchment talks in Finland. In early July the company indicated that it would drop some 2,300 of 3,200 employees in Finland and transfer operations from its Salo plant to other locations in Espoo and Tampere.
Microsoft said that it will make a final decision on job cuts at its Espoo and Tampere units later on. However, the company said it will proceed with concentrating its product management and product development teams for its phone business in Espoo and Tampere.
The Espoo office will continue to work on high-end phones, applications development and design. The Tampere unit will focus on mid-range smartphones and development of key technologies.
The company previously said it would send home 7,800 workers worldwide, mainly from the phone business it bought from Nokia. At the time it also booked an "impairment charge" of nearly seven billion euros as a result of the purchase of the faltering devices unit.
Apart from its team of former Nokia employees, Microsoft also has a sales and marketing team of less than 300 workers in Finland.