Changes at Microsoft

Geekwire is citing a memo from Satya Nadella. Here is something that caught my eye:

we are taking a $1.2B charge in Q2 related to severance costs, changes to our hardware portfolio, and the cost of lease consolidation as we create higher density across our workspaces.

Microsoft is removing some 10,000 jobs while realigning the company. They are putting $1.2 billion on their balance sheet to offset costs for this change. Severance cost is money paid out to fired employees, cost of lease consolidation is money paid to get out of lease contracts and to move to fewer and smaller office spaces, but changes to our hardware portfolio is the interesting one.

There will not be any press statements about which products Microsoft is dropping. Your guess is as good as mine. You will have to watch what disappears from the Microsoft Store.

Update: Meanwhile somebody wrote a comment (disqualified by refusing to leave his full name) which had a good suggestion:

Update: This was a good call. CNET reports that Microsoft is shutting down Altspace VR on March, 10.

I was invited to an event at the beginning of February where Microsoft is demonstrating a teleporting service, which is most likely built on the cloud-based AR/VR platform Mesh.