Tech companies struggle as Microsoft, Sony and Nokia announced job losses

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It’s been a hard week in the technology sector:

• Sony announced it would make an operating loss of $3 billion in the year to March 2009 which, suggests the FT, means that the company is bleeding about $40m a day. Sir Howard Stringer has plans to cut 16,000 jobs at Sony although the FT reports that there was substantial resistance as he tries to shift Sony’s emphasis from hardware to software. These losses follow 8,000 job losses announced in December.
• Microsoft announced its first job cuts in its 34 year history with news that 5,000 jobs are to go.  CEO Steve Ballmer also said that market volatility was such that Microsoft was no longer offering earnings or revenue forecasts for the rest of its fiscal year ending June 30, 2009 — other than to predict both will very likely be lower.
• Nokia forecast a 10 percent slide in industry sales as the global crisis saps consumer demand. For an industry used to insatiable growth, this will have repercussions across the entire handset industry. Nokia also announced it would be reducing headcount by 1,000 although half of that is due to come from sales of businesses.

All three companies will now have entries in the GameOverZone. They won’t be included in the job loss tracker unless there is confirmation that some of these cuts will be hitting the games operations.

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