On Thursday, Microsoft announced its largest round of layoffs in the company's history, cutting about 18,000 jobs as part of its efforts in reconstructing the company.

Nokia's Devices and Services business, which the company acquired last year for $5 billion, will be most affected, Business Insider reports.

A total of 12,500 professional and factory positions are expected to be let go by the end of this year. This number represents half of the employees from Nokia who joined Microsoft in the acquisition.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, announced in an email to the company's employees that their new strategy is geared towards making the company more agile as they move forward. With fewer employees, the rest of the teams will be able to work more freely. 

However, while this does not mean that Nokia will be gone for good, Nadella hinted that Microsoft could possibly end the Android-powered X smartphones and focusing more on the Lumia products, which run on Windows. Moreover, the Surface and Xbox divisions will be seeing limited change when compared to the recently-acquired mobile phone division.

Microsoft will continue to work with its plans that they started to implement earlier this year with regard to Surface and Xbox, Engadget reports.

Nadella believes that these cuts will help Microsoft to pursue its long term goals by realigning itself today as they go towards innovation in both the mobile and the cloud technology sectors.  

Microsoft has started to reduce the initial 13,000 positions and the rest will be notified within the next six months. Prior to this major layoff, the tech giant's biggest job cut was 5,800 during the low point of the recession in early 2009. Currently, they have 127,104 employees from all over the world, making this cut amount to 15 percent of its workforce.

Microsoft will be expending $1.1 to $1.6 billion for severance and benefits packages.