Ballmer Moves Windows Phone Boss to Windows 8 Project
Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 boss has been assigned to a new role by CEO Steve Ballmer.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer yesterday sent out a cryptic note to staff informing them that Terry Myerson, head of engineering for Redmond's phone unit, will add business development, marketing and other responsibilities to his list of duties. The idea behind the change is to free up Andy Lees to work directly for Steve Ballmer on a special project.
"As I look at where we are, what we’ve done, and what we must do in the year ahead, I’m making two leadership changes to ensure we build on our momentum," Ballmer said in the email to employees, which has since been published by Microsoft.
"First, I have asked Andy Lees to move to a new role working for me on a time-critical opportunity focused on driving maximum impact in 2012 with Windows Phone and Windows 8," said Ballmer, adding "We have tremendous potential with Windows Phone and Windows 8, and this move sets us up to really deliver against that potential."
Ballmer goes on to say that Terry Myerson will assume Lees' existing responsibility for leading the Windows Phone division. Praised as a key component in the engineering work on Windows Phone 7 and 7.5, Ballmer says Terry will pick up Lees' development, marketing, and other business responsibilities and is not expecting any problems during the transition.
"Because Terry has been so integrally involved in our Windows Phone work already, I’m confident that [Terry] can make a seamless transition to this new and broader leadership responsibility," he said.
Though the first half of the email makes it sound as though Andy Lees is being called upon to perform a special task, Ballmer's note to employees makes it sound like Lees won't be returning to the Windows Phone division anytime soon.
"I want to personally thank Andy for his contributions to the phone team," he writes. "In the three years Andy has been leading the phone group, we’ve come a long way – we reset our strategy, built a strong team that delivered WP7 and WP7.5 and created critical new partnerships and ecosystem around Windows Phone. That is a ton of progress in a brief period of time, and I’m excited for Terry and team to keep driving forward and for Andy to dig into a new challenge."
Last month, Ballmer sparked rumors about Microsoft's intentions for Windows 8 in terms of smartphones with remarks he made during a recent shareholder meeting. Those listening to the CEO say he mentioned "driving Windows down to the phone with Windows 8," however, Microsoft says that Ballmer was misheard and that he never said Windows 8 was coming to phones. Check out more on that story here.

Ummm...no they don't.
Just an FYI but Windows 8 is only available for PC right now, so why you added "on a pc" is beyond me.
Well, get ready all for the massive direction of Windows Phone, now coming to a PC near you!
I know all of you are going to start flagging this comment negative but let's be honest. WP7.5 is what WP7 should have been. (like so many MS projects) All of you WP lovers out there be realistic. Phone manufacturers aren't exactly running to make WP phones and when compared to Android and iOS it is an inferior product.
I don't see how putting the person in charge of one failed project in charge of another is going to make them both succeed.
How is it a failed project when the OS can run around your Android with the latest hardware in circles with the last gen hardware?
You mean like how Android 2.2 was how Android should've been in the first place, or how iOS4 was how iOS should've been?
And yes, WP7 is a failure. It amazes me people here can't see pass tech hardware...doesn't matter if WP7 is better than Android (which it is not, only in areas of display smoothnees maybe). You have to look at it as a whole package. Android is still a much better UI (Tiles sucks ballz) and the momentum of the Android market and partners is staggering. WP7 is so insignificant, frankly, nobody cares it's there. This is why it is called a failure. Because it has failed to capture significant market share, failed to capture the continued interest of partners (i think there was very new few WP7 phones left after the initial launch...partners are already losing money on it...). Now left NOKIA to save WP7....which i doubt they can. Too little, too late. If Nokia has launched together with WP7, then the momentunm will be greater.....now it's just too late.
Windows Phone may seem to be operating badly but the OS is top-notch, only the sales are bad, but that is not a problem for customers, it is a problem for Microsoft and financially supporting it until it acheives more market penetration.
Same will apply to Windows 8, it will have some difficulty replacing Windows 7, because it is so good but if there is one thing that is guaranteed is that closer integration between the phone, the desktop and the console can only be good news for everyone.
I have been working and programming in Microsoft environments since 1985 and Microsoft has always made my efforts as painful as possible. The first major pain was MS DOS 4.0 in 1988. This would not even run on my computers and I switched back to 3.2. Windows presented so many Homer Simpson "Doh!" moments I haven't the room to describe the highlights here. The large amount of "undocumented" programming features (Microsoft hid the niftier stuff so only their software could do certain things) was upsetting. Windows CE (compact edition) when I worked on portable devices was excruciating. Vista literally made me cry out in pain. Windows 7 (Vista 2.0) fixed the problems but Microsoft made me pay for it after I paid for Vista.
Microsoft applications don't fare any better. The no longer logical row limit in Excel and the bizarrely complex internal structure of Word files are examples. Yesterday's efforts to merge two Outlook 2010 form templates into one for a client resulted in ten consecutive crashes and dozens of incredibly unhelpful "help" messages. Which brings me to Microsoft's huge lack of help content and accuracy.
My personal devices are Linux based from Android to Ubuntu except for this little Acer ultraportable I'm typing on right now and I'm looking for Chrome install information.
I've been testing Windows 8 developer release and although crude the basic structure has potential. However, I and several others have been commenting that the Android like (well, MS copied it) interface where the apps that running can not be shut down (they enter a sort of terminate and stay resident state) and although it works on a phone or tablet where only a few applications are used, a typical desktop user will run dozens of apps and paging through the list can be cumbersome. The Microsoft developer running the forum responded to our advice with: "That's the way it's designed and that's how it will work." Wow! And people call me arrogant.
Getting to the point: Microsoft has still been very successful despite all of these debacles and will continue to be for the near future even though they make the same mistakes repeatedly. Live with it and work around it or avoid everything Microsoft and ignore it.
Hey, back in the day Beta was superior to VHS but look how that turned out.
I need a smartphone for my job to connect to media in many different models of cars. A WP product will not work for me, no auto manufacturer supports it. Not even in MS Synch powered Fords. What does that tell you?
Maybe because we feel like we're using tablet software. If it felt like an OS designed to work "on a PC", then the thought to differentiate it from other platforms wouldn't come to mind.
I'm skipping this train wreck of an OS. I wouldn't use that new Start "feature" if I was paid to use it.
Because the software doesn't allow the level of customization that people really want with their phone, thus few actually adopt it. Performance < Personalization for most people. Thus, the iPhone and Android phones do well, and the less versatile WP7 phone sell far less.
Sure Win 8 can be configured to either PC desktop or smartphone usage, but the two will not become one anytime in the near future, because there is NO viable replacement for a REAL keyboard, it is that simple.