Fears have mounted over potential job losses at Microsoft's Irish base - after the company confirmed it is set to lay off thousands of staff.

The company, which has a strong Dublin base, announced the plans last night to cut thousands of jobs worldwide.

Currently there are 1,200 staff working for Microsoft at their EMEA operations base in the capital.

Some 600 new roles were only created by the company in February, 500 of which had been for its Inside Sales Centre and the other 100 as part of its current operations.

The company currently has more than 121,000 employees worldwide, 50,000 of which are based outside of the US.

It is expected that the majority of job cuts will come from outside of the States.

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Most of the job losses will come from sales, as the company aims at selling more subscriptions to their software applications that can be used through any internet device.

"Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis," Microsoft said in a statement.

"This can result in increased investment in some places and, from time-to-time, re-deployment in others."

The job cuts are part of Microsoft's shift away from its traditional approach of licensing its Office software and other programs for a one-time fee tied to a single computer.

More than 26 million consumers subscribe to Microsoft's Office 365 service.

This is double that of the previous year, for the software that offers programs such as Word and Excel.

Meanwhile, revenue from licensing of Microsoft's Windows operating system has been increasing by 5 percent or less in the past three quarters.

Irish Independent