CNBC's Jon Fortt Doubts IBM Is Laying Off 100,000 Employees

Reports surfaced on Monday suggesting that International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM) is planning a massive reorganization involving 26 percent of its workforce was questioned by CNBC's Jon Fortt.

According to Forbes's Robert X. Cringely, nearly one in four IBM employees will soon find out they will be out of a job as early as February as part of the company's largest reorganization code-named “Project Chrome.” Forbes noted that the mass layoff is an “accounting resource action” following 11 consecutive quarters of declining revenue.

“Some reorganizations are well thought-out and absolutely essential but Project Chrome won't be one of those,” Cringley wrote. “It will traumatize the corporation and put most accounts into immediate crisis. While survivors dig out from the devastation IBM will change their managers and their job descriptions. With fewer people and changing roles, things IBM has contractual obligations to do for its customers will start to be overlooked. If you are an IBM customer you should probably should start working on plans to keep your projects moving forward and your systems running.”

However, CNBC's technology expert Jon Fortt took to Twitter, suggesting Cringley's numbers are incorrect and the total number of layoffs will ultimately be less than 10,000.

$IBM not laying off 100K people as rumored. It's < 10K, evidenced by $600M charge they took last quarter @SquawkAlley

— Jon Fortt (@jonfortt) January 26, 2015

Shares of IBM were recently trading higher by 1.3 percent at $157.83.