Microsoft confirms another 2,100 job cuts

Microsoft made a second round of layoffs on Thursday, moving towards its target of cutting 18,000 staff, or about 14 percent of its workforce.

The software giant gave notice to 2,100 employees on Thursday, 747 of those in the Seattle area, a company spokesman said. That is in addition to 13,000 laid off in July, which means a further 2,900 are set to be laid off over the next nine months or so.

Thursday's cuts were spread over different countries and teams, the spokesman said. The last wave of cuts mostly affected the handset business of Nokia, which Microsoft bought earlier this year.

The program of 18,000 cuts is the deepest in the software giant's 39-year history and arrived in the first year of chief executive Satya Nadella's tenure.

Microsoft expects the cuts to be "substantially complete" by 31 December and "fully completed" by 30 June 2015, the end of the company's fiscal year. Microsoft will take a pre-tax charge between US$1.1 billion and US$1.6 billion to cover costs associated with the restructuring.