“Microsoft announced a sweeping shake-up of its executive ranks Thursday, placing new executives over operations facing fierce new competition from Google, Apple and cellphone makers,” Saul Hansell and John Markoff report for The New York Times.
“The announcements were part of a broad management reorganization involving seven new senior vice presidents and seven new corporate vice presidents,” Hansell and Markoff report. “One of the more significant leadership changes was in the cellphone operations. Andy Lees was named senior vice president for mobile communications operations. Mr. Lees, who had overseen the server business, succeeds Pieter Knook, who, the company said, ‘made the decision to leave Microsoft to pursue other opportunities.'”
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, right. Probably wants “to spend more time with his family,” too.
Hansell and Markoff continue, “Microsoft has been paying more attention to its cellphone business following the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android software operating system. In only a few months of the iPhone’s release, according to Canalys, a market research firm, Apple gained 28 percent of the smartphone market in the United States, a greater share of the market than the cellphones using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software.”
“The other major change was the replacement of Steve Berkowitz, the current senior vice president of Microsoft’s Online Services group,” Hansell and Markoff report. “Mr. Berkowitz, the former chief executive of the online site Ask Jeeves, was hired with great fanfare in April 2006 to help revive Microsoft’s search and portal operations. Microsoft has been unable to make a dent in Google’s growing dominance in search and search advertising. Mr. Berkowitz will leave the company this August, the company said.”
More on which deck chairs are being rearranged here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bill” (no, not that Bill) for the heads up.]
A fish rots from the head down.