Microsoft senior executive Balch to retire

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer announced that Robbie Balch, chief of the company’s Entertainment and Devices division is retiring. Both Microsoft’s Xbox gaming console business and its smartphone and mobile business had been looked after by Balch for the better part of a decade. No replacement of Balch will be appointed but the two executives who head both units will report directly to Ballmer.

For the chief of Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business (MCB), Andrew Lees that clears the decks for him to take whatever steps he wants with respect to the radically redesigned Windows Phone operating system, the most visible of the company’s mobile offerings.

Longtime rivals such as Research in Motion had outclassed, out-developed and out-marketed Microsoft. Even worse, brand-new mobile platforms, first Apple’s widely successful iPhone and then Google’s Android mobile OS took a toll on Microsoft’s profits.

Microsoft’s server products were turned into a multi-billion-dollar revenue river by Lees after Ballmer shifted him to MCB to turn around a failing operation in 2008. Lees recruited a host of new marketing talent from Microsoft’s consumer businesses like the Zune music player and Windows Media Center. New engineering talent including nearly 20% of Microsoft’s elite distinguished engineers was enticed into the group from elsewhere in the company.

Microsoft developers well received the new mobile platform. Most of these developers already possessed the experience with Microsoft development tools to begin grappling with Windows Phone applications. Microsoft worked in close understanding with handset manufacturers and operators to design a hardware specification for phones running the new operating system.

According to Microsoft’s mobile chief, Robbie Bach, the company is confident that it going to see Windows Mobile 7 as something that is differentiated and sets the bar forward, not in an evolutionary way from where it is today, but something that looks, feels and acts and performs completely different.