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Nokia today announced the appointment of Stephen Elop, currently the President of Microsoft’s Business Division (i.e. mostly Office), as their new president and CEO starting September 21. Nokia needed a change since they have been left as far behind in the smartphone race as Microsoft, but observers are skeptical if Elop is the right man for a tough job (similar thoughts here).
As for Microsoft, no replacement has been named and now Steve Ballmer has two major Microsoft businesses reporting directly to him, the Business Division and the Entertainment & Devices Division.
Microsoft today announced a major shakeup in the continually troubled Entertainment and Devices Division via a letter from Steve Ballmer to employees:
Robbie Bach and J Allard, founding fathers of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division, are leaving the company as part of a broader restructuring that will give CEO Steve Ballmer more direct oversight of consumer businesses including Microsoft’s struggling mobile unit.
The changes — a major management reorganization, even by Microsoft’s standards — will reshape the division leading the company’s battles against Google, Apple, Sony, Nintendo and other rivals in the hard-fought consumer technology market.
Bach, 48, president of the division since its inception five years ago, isn’t slated to be replaced. That will effectively dissolve the division’s current structure and leave the existing Xbox and Windows Mobile leaders to report to Ballmer starting in July.
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Microsoft is describing Bach’s departure as a retirement. He said the decision was his own, and he wasn’t encouraged to leave. He’ll remain at Microsoft through the fall, to ensure a smooth transition.
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Speaking with TechFlash, Allard said his decision was unrelated to the recent cancelation of the "Courier" dual-screen tablet project that he had championed inside the company. Allard said he doesn’t plan to work for Apple, Google or any other Microsoft rivals. After 19 years at the company, he said, he wants to devote more time to his personal interests, particularly adventure sports.
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The separation of the Windows Mobile unit from the current Entertainment & Devices reporting structure also reflects the company’s efforts to connect its mobile initiatives with a wider range of products, including its online services and traditional software.
Don Mattrick, the senior vice president in charge of Microsoft’s Interactive Entertainment Business, will report directly to Ballmer as part of the management changes, as will Andy Lees, the senior vice president who leads the Mobile Communications Business.
Mary Jo Foley also notes some other changes:
Windows Web Services is born. Antoine Leblond, who has been Senior Vice President of the Office Productivity Applications Group, is moving to a new role: Senior Vice President for the Windows Web Services team. What is Windows Web Services? Good question. CEO Steve Ballmer’s e-mail describes it as “integral Windows services that today deliver updates, solutions, community and depth information for the Windows consumer.” Leblond will be reporting directly to Windows/Windows Live President Steven Sinofsky.
Office gets a new engineering chief. Kurt DelBene, Senior Vice President of the Office Business Productivity Group, is now head of all of the engineering responsibilities for the Office business.
Former Live Platform Services head David Treadwell moves out of the Windows division and into the Interactive Entertainment Business (the part of Microsoft that oversees Xbox and video games).
Xbox has finally started making money after the billions poured into it, but the Windows Mobile story was acknowledged even by Microsoft to be a vast missed opportunity verging on a disaster. Microsoft doesn’t like to lose markets where they used to have a commanding presence. The other entertainment products are yawners (e.g. Zune), but Mac Office is still a money maker and customers still love Microsoft keyboards and mice. Unfortunately they are the smallest and least visible part of the E&D menagerie.
Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer and Robbie Bach delivered the keynote last night at the 2010 Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas and it was the usual mixture of self-congratulatory boosterism and product and technology demos. Here is my list of highlights:
Windows 7
After a report on how well Windows 7 is selling, there were the PC demos including a prototype Hewlett-Packard slate PC that the technical press was pining for.
It looks like a touch enabled netbook to me and while it may have a niche, I suspect I would be screaming for a keyboard (or at least a stylus) in under a minute of usage. Perhaps more interesting were the ultrathin Lenovo A300 laptop with a 21.5" screen and the Sony VAIO home entertainment notebook with a 24" screen. How big does a laptop have to get before it becomes a single element desktop?
Bing
HP is making Bing the default Web search engine and MSN the default home page on all their PCs in 42 countries.
Xbox
Ballmer put the usual lipstick on this pig and Robbie Bach appeared later to flog upcoming games (including another lucrative Halo version) and tout Project Natal, the motion sensing technology that will appear later this year to replace the standard controllers for some games.
Windows Mobile
Zzzzzz.
Mediaroom 2.0
Bach also announced Mediaroom 2.0, the latest version of Microsoft’s IPTV offering for service providers which now supports PCs and smartphoes as well as set top boxes and Xbox consoles for TV viewing.
Summary
Microsoft really did not have much of its own to show again this year. I am almost beginning to miss the goofy Bill Gates future technology skits.
Microsoft today announced that the Azure (cloud services) group is leaving Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie’s adtech team for the mainline product organization. Azure is being combined with the Windows Server & Solutions Group run by Bill Laing to form the Server & Cloud Division (SCD) under Senior Vice President Amitabh Srivastava reporting to Bob Muglia, the president of Microsoft’s Server and Tools business. If your scorecard is getting a little crowded with all the crossouts and connecting lines, Mary Jo Foley persuaded a Microsoft spokesman to provide the current Server and Tools lineup:
1. Business Online Services Division (led by David Thompson) (*NOTE: development only)
2. Business Platform Division (led by Ted Kummert)
3. Developer Division (led by S. Somagasar)
4. Identity and Security Division (led by Lee Nackman)
5. Management and Services Division (led by Brad Anderson)
6. Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE, led by Walid Abu-Hadba)
7. Server and Tools Marketing Group (STMG, led by Robert Wahbe)
8. Server and Cloud Division (led by Amitabh Srivastava)
