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Phoenix666 writes:

Microsoft plans to announce a major new round of layoffs as early as Wednesday, as the company seeks to further cut costs in a shifting technology landscape.

The layoffs are in addition to the about 18,000 employees that Microsoft said it planned to let go a year ago, according to people briefed on the plans, who asked for anonymity because the details were confidential. The new job cuts are expected to affect people in Microsoft's hardware group, among other parts of the company, including the struggling smartphone business that it acquired from Nokia last year in a $7.2 billion deal.
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In June, Microsoft said it was selling its online display advertising business to AOL, as the company exited a business for which it once had high hopes.

Another area in which Microsoft is stumbling is smartphones, a market in which it has continued to lose market share since acquiring Nokia's handset business. Microsoft has so far failed to turn the Windows Phone operating system, which runs on its handsets, into a vibrant alternative to the two leading mobile platforms, iOS from Apple and Android from Google.

How do you read the tea leaves, Soylent? What does the future hold for Microsoft?