Wireless Leader Paul Gross Resigns

The head of Microsoft’s wireless strategy, Senior Vice President Paul Gross, has resigned from the company. His departure leaves the Mobility Group without a leader at a time when it has just shipped its first major products but faces an increasingly uncertain market. Stepping in for Gross temporarily will be Bob Muglia, group vice president for .NET Services, aided by Gross’s former lieutenants Ben Waldman, vice president of the Mobile Devices Division, and Juha Christensen, vice president of Mobility Marketing and Sales.

Gross championed the formation of the Mobility Group and was one of the major proponents of wireless devices as an element of enterprise information systems and as a vehicle for delivering consumer services for. The group recently reached an important milestone in releasing enterprise versions of its wireless data access software products, including Mobile Information Server, Outlook Mobile Access, and Outlook Mobile Manager. (See “Mobile Products Due in June” on page 9 of the June 2001 Update.) Now the group faces the formidable task of finding buyers for the corresponding versions of these products for wireless carriers, at a time when demand for wireless data services has been disappointing outside of Japan, and when many European carriers are weighed down with debt after paying for the spectrum they need to deploy higher-bandwidth “3G” data services. In addition, the group has not yet been able to convince any of the top three phone manufacturers (Ericsson, Motorola, or Nokia) to buy its “Stinger” platform for large-screen “smart phones,” which could prove a more usable client for data services than today’s cell phones.