Microsoft is restructuring its hardware and Windows divisions for the third time in four years. In 2020, Microsoft merged both groups under the leadership of Panos Panay. In fall 2023, Panay moved to Amazon; the groups were then split up. Now Microsoft is bringing them back together and appointing Pavan Davuluri as head.
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This emerges from a company memo The Verge published. Davuluri has been at Microsoft for 23 years, serving as Corporate Vice President since August 2021. In the meantime, he was explicitly responsible for the “Windows silicon”, such as the Microsoft versions of Qualcomm chips, including the SQ3 as the newly released Snapadragon 8cx Gen 3. Previously there were also Microsoft Surface Editions of AMD’s Ryzen 3000.
Microsoft is also said to be developing its own ARM processors for notebooks and tablets. However, there is no official information about this yet.
Windows Experiences integrated again
Since Panay’s departure, Davuluri has led the Surface team (“Windows + Devices”), while Mikhail Parakhin was responsible for Windows development (“Windows Experiences”). The Verge hints at internal strife: The Windows division was supposedly supposed to be subordinate to newcomer Mustafa Suleyman, and Parakhin would have had to report to him from then on. Parakhin is said to have then decided to “pursue new opportunities”. Suleyman co-founded Google DeepMind and was CEO of Inflection AI – now he is CEO of the standalone company Microsoft AI.
The re-combined group will act as the core for the broader Experiences + Devices division, which will continue to be led by Rajesh Jha – a management step above Davuluri. Microsoft AI will not be given a leadership role there, but the teams should cooperate closely with each other: “The Windows team will continue to work closely with the Microsoft AI team on AI, silicon and experiences,” the memo says. Meanwhile, the Web Experiences group will become part of Microsoft AI. It is now supposed to build AI functions into the Edge browser.
It can’t hurt the products if they come from a common source. In the summer, Microsoft wants to introduce the Surface Pro 10 and the Surface Laptop 6 to end customers – both exclusively with Qualcomm’s ARM processor Snapdragon X Elite. To achieve this, Microsoft primarily needs to renovate Windows on ARM. The first attempt with the Surface Pro X failed due to poor software support.
On Tuesday, Microsoft also announced a change at the top of the German subsidiary. In mid-April, Agnes Heftberger will take over management of Microsoft Germany from the outgoing Marianne Janik.
(mma)