The restructuring of corporate continues for the company as Joe Belfiore is taking charge of more product groups. While still Corporate Vice President, Belfiore is now leading the Windows client experience. In his position, he will be a chief lieutenant to Rajesh Jha, the head of the recently created Experiences & Devices division. Under his remit, Belfiore will head up Windows Shell, OneNote, Microsoft Edge, and other experiences. For example, he will also oversee continued development of Education, Microsoft To-Do, and more. The latter is interesting because we recently reported on Microsoft’s difficulties in transitioning Wunderlist into To-Do. Belfiore will now spearhead the move. It is worth noting that Microsoft has yet to go official with this announcement. In fact, considering Belfiore is not gaining a new title, the company may forgo the formality of announcing the move.
Windows Phone Collapse
In many ways, Belfiore is the face of Microsoft’s failed attempts to conquer mobile with Windows Phone and then Windows 10 Mobile. Up until 2015 he was Vice President for Windows PC-Tablet-Phone before taking a sabbatical. He returned in 2016 as head of Windows 10 Consumer Shell and was the man who first broke the news that Microsoft was effectively abandoning Windows 10 Mobile. Ok, the company still supports the platform in terms of security and stabilization. However, Belfiore and then CEO Satya Nadella confirmed last year no new features or hardware will come to Windows 10 Mobile. While a major component of the failure of Microsoft’s mobile aspirations, Belfiore seems to have plenty of money in the bank at Redmond. He has been with the company for 25 years and also played a major role in Xbox Live and Zune (another dead platform).
