The Promised IBM Layoffs Have Begun With Over 1,200 Cut In Europe And India, According To Reports

IBM warned that it would be letting some workers go, and several news outlets say those cuts have begun, aimed so far at workers in Europe and India.

As off midday Wednesday, some 1,200 people in Europe had been let go (with cuts in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Norway), plus a few hundred more in India, reports the WRALTechWire blog.

IBM will also shed 7,500 jobs with the sale of its x86 server unit to Lenovo.

IBM CFO Martin Schroeter told Wall Street analysts last month during the quarterly conference call that IBM planned cuts in 2014 that will cost the company about "$1 billion in 2014, again same as last year," he said.

IBM hasn't specified the total number of jobs that were affected in 2013, nor how many it plans to slice in 2014. Speculation puts the number at between 6,000 and 13,000 worldwide, with an estimated 3,500 people affected in the U.S. last year, reports WRALTechWire.

An IBM spokesperson tells Business Insider that these cuts don't affect the total headcount, because IBM is also hiring and acquiring in hot areas, like cloud computing.

"IBM's total workforce has remained stable over the past three years, and IBM now employs more than 400,000 people worldwide," a spokesperson said.

As of 2012, the latest numbers available, it had 434,246 employees.

The upside for nervous IBM workers is that Schroeter promised that IBM would do most of its cuts in the first quarter of 2014 and not drag them out over the year. Last year, it talked about the cuts months before they reportedly began in June.