Microsoft Corp, the world’s largest software company, plans to announce a new round of layoffs as early as Wednesday as it tries to cut costs further, the New York Times reported.

The latest job cuts are in addition to the 18,000 jobs Microsoft said it planned to cut a year ago, the newspaper said, citing sources familiar with the matter.

New Delhi: Indian businessmen scrambled to showcase many of their existing investment plans and allocations as a response to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Digital India initiative, which was launched on Wednesday. By the end of the day, they had announced planned investments of Rs.4.5 trillion, and hires of 1.8 million people, over the next 5-10 years.

The numbers sound highly laudable, but are mostly investments in their own businesses, experts said.

Software maker company, Microsoft is shutting down its web display advertising business as CEO Satya Nadella is focusing on three key areas – personal computing, cloud platforms and business productivity. The company is handing operations over to AOL and App Nexus Inc. Financial details of the deal are still undisclosed.

About 1,200 jobs will be impacted due to this change, with some positions could axed or transferred as part of the change. Now, AOL will be responsible for all Microsoft’s display advertising inventory across several platforms including MSN, Outlook.com and Skype, and in nine markets such as U.S., the U.K., Canada, Brazil and France among others. AOL was recently acquired by Verizon in a $4.4 billion all cash deal.

Four senior Microsoft executives, including Stephen Elop and Mark Penn, will leave the technology company in the biggest organisational shake-up yet under Satya Nadella, its chief executive.

In an email sent to Microsoft employees on Wednesday morning, Nadella said that three of the departures were related to his decision to organise the company's engineering efforts into fewer groups. The three executives leaving as a result are Elop, former chief executive of Nokia, who has been leading Microsoft's devices group; Eric Rudder, leader of its advanced technology and education efforts; and Kirill Tatarinov, head of its business solutions group.

Microsoft has tied up with Snapdeal to launch an online store that would include full range of Microsoft products such as phones, tablets, PCs and software.

All the Microsoft products will be available on microsoft.snapdeal.com. “This unique, self-contained store built by Snapdeal will allow users accessibility of Microsoft’s unified portfolio of phones, tablets, PCs and Microsoft software,” said Tony Navin, senior vice-president, electronics and home, Snapdeal.

Microsoft on Thursday said it had set up three data centres in this country. With these, the Redmond-headquartered software major expects to be better equipped to target sensitive sectors like government and financial services. where there is always fear on data privacy.

Every year, Microsoft invests around $5 billion in setting up data centres and towards their operations. The centres have the ability to scale up further without much of physical expansion.

The technology-savvy Narendra Modi government may have upset large software firms, especially Microsoft, in its bid to be more efficient and transparent. In March, the government announced an open-source policy that makes it mandatory for all future applications and services to be designed using the open-source software (OSS). In case of an exception, where proprietary or closed-source software (CSS) is deployed, officials have to justify their decision.

Microsoft, which bought Nokia’s handset business last year, has only 3% of the global smartphone market. By contrast, Android phones, led by Samsung, control 81% of the market and Apple 15%, according to Strategy Analytics. But in recent months, it has become clear that Microsoft is pumping in a lot of juice to change the momentum of its mobile business and drive itself towards the low-end, budget market segment to stay right in the middle of the competition in emerging markets like India.

The strategy continues to yield results as analysts say that nearly 78% of market demand is for phones in the sub-R10,000 range. This strategy has forced the Redmond, Washington-based technology firm to put out competitive low-end devices, like the Lumia 520 and Lumia 535. In other words, Microsoft is not just trying to stay relevant, it wants to takeover the segment altogether, at least in a high growth market like India, where people are increasingly looking to upgrade from a feature phone to a smartphone, with a growing aspiration for smarter experiences.

A 13—year—old Indian—origin boy, who invented a low—cost portable Braille printer, is now working with technology giant Microsoft to integrate it with Windows to make it easily accessible to the visually—impaired and plans to launch it commercially in November.

Shubham Banerjee, an eighth—grade student in Santa Clara, California, was invited by Microsoft to showcase his Braigo 2.0 printer at a tech fair organised by the company here.

Microsoft has announced its partnership with a group of telecom companies to build a new transpacific undersea cable that will connect a number of points in China, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan with the U.S. West Coast.

According to the company, the New Cross Pacific (NCP) Cable Network will provide faster connections for its customers and help it compete on cloud cost.

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