The company bought Nokia's mobile phone business in 2014 but has failed to make it profitable. In the same year, the company dismissed 1,050 of Nokia's employees in the Finnish towns of Salo and Oulu and shut down the Oulu product development unit. This decision was followed by last year's move to axe another 2,300 jobs in Salo, Tampere and Espoo.
Still, Microsoft's failure is all but an ordinary one, argued Linus Larsson of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.
"A technology company which is unable to stay relevant as the world progressively moves to mobile phones, is doomed to fall behind in the whole consumer segment," he wrote.
Microsoft's Finnish adventure has left a large mess to clean up. Finland's Minister of Economic Affairs Olli Rehn and Minister of Justice and Labor Jari Lindström defined the situation as "extremely difficult."
"In just a few years thousands of workers in the information and communications technology sector have lost their jobs," the ministers stated to Finland's national broadcaster Yle.
Microsoft had been gradually curtailing thousands of workers from its payroll ever since it acquired Nokia's phone business, leaving Finland with a bleeding wound of several thousand jobless professionals.