SEATTLE — Microsoft is making further cuts to what is left of its ailing smartphone business, as sales of the devices continue to fade.

The company said on Wednesday that it would eliminate up to 1,850 jobs as a result of the cutbacks, about 1,350 of them in Finland, where the mobile business that Microsoft acquired from Nokia a couple of years ago originated. Microsoft will take an accounting charge of $950 million related to the cuts, it said.

In an email to all Microsoft employees sent early Wednesday, Terry Myerson, executive vice president of the company’s Windows and devices group, described the cuts as “incredibly difficult” but said that Microsoft needed “to be more focused in our phone hardware efforts.”

As downbeat a note as the layoffs were for Microsoft’s smartphone business, there isn’t much left of the army of people it once had working on the devices.