Summary: Microsoft's 'damage control' strategy is working, as the media helps Microsoft disguise company-wide layoffs as layoffs at another company

"So that next firing cycle came today at Microsoft," wrote Mr. Ahonen, a renowned Nokia expert. It's about Microsoft. These are Microsoft layoffs and the latest layoffs should be described as such.

Commenting on this subject, some Finnish media chose to focus only on the Nokia aspect. "Microsoft has announced a new round of lay-offs," it said, "and an ‘impairment charge’ associated with its acquisition of Finnish firm Nokia’s mobile phone business. Some 7,800 jobs are to go, mainly in the devices unit bought from Nokia."

It also showed the impact on the Finnish government:

The Finnish government will submit a supplementary budget in September to lay out its plans to deal with the fallout from Microsoft’s plans to lay off some 2,300 people in Finland.

This is a bit misleading, however, as our sources indicate that the layoffs are far more wide-reaching than the mobile unit and Nokia. Some reader from Finland claims the publication above (both articles) to be Microsoft-connected in the staff sense (at a high level), so maybe there is an attempt to misdirect and distract. Watch how the Microsoft-friendly ToryGraph frames this as a "Nokia deal" thing. It's not. Other British media says "Microsoft writes-off Nokia purchase", but that's not really the news, is it? The layoffs are news. Not single department is affected and Microsoft is short on details.

"It's quite clearly a gross propaganda pattern and it has proven effective so far"Microsoft expects (and needs) people to think that Vista 10 will be great and Windows is in good shape whilst announcing these layoffs, so the effort to blame all the layoffs on mobile failure and "Nokia" is a good distraction ahead of Vista 10's release.

Let us state this again: Microsoft suffers cuts at many divisions other than mobile. Don't believe the media coverage which tries to blame all of Microsoft's problems on that. It's quite clearly a gross propaganda pattern and it has proven effective so far. ⬆