*Sony said in April it will cut about 10,000 of its 168,000 worldwide employees as part of a . Some of the workforce reduction will come by spinning off non-core businesses, including chemical operations and LCD screen production. Sony lost about $2.7 billion in its fiscal year ended in March. The company, which has lost ground in areas such as TVs, is refocusing on consumer products such as phones and tablets.

*NEC kicked off 2012 by , including 3,000 outside of Japan, while forecasting a $1.3 billion loss in the fiscal year ended in March. The company's smartphone business has suffered from incursions by other companies into the Japanese market, while NEC has also continued to suffer from flood-ruined plants in Thailand.

*Yahoo, which continues to take a pounding from Google and others, said in April job cuts would enable it to go forward as a focused on its "core media, connections and commerce businesses." Yahoo CEO Scott Thompson said the company was reducing its workforce by about 2,000 people, or 14% overall, and as it turns out, those numbers wound up including after it was revealed he had embellished his resume. 

*Computerworld reported in March that IBM cut 1,000 workers in the United States, though details on where within IBM the cuts were made is fuzzy. IBM is estimated to employ a little less than 100,000 people in the United States, and more than 400,000 worldwide.

*Finally, one workforce reduction that might hit especially close to home for Network World's IT professional readers: Lloyds Banking Group is offshoring some 300 IT roles to suppliers, and cutting another 100 IT workers. The cuts are part of the company's 1,600-job reduction across the United Kingdom, according to an IDG/Computerworld UK report.