Panos Panay, chief product officer of Microsoft Corp., shows the brand new Floor Laptop computer 3 laptop throughout a Microsoft product occasion in New York, U.S., on Wednesday, Oct. 2, 2019. Microsoft unveiled a dual-screen, foldable telephone that may run on Google’s Android working system, leaping again right into a promote it exited years in the past.
Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Former Microsoft product chief Panos Panay will be part of Amazon later this 12 months to supervise its gadgets and providers unit, the corporate mentioned Wednesday.
Panay will change longtime Amazon gadgets head Dave Limp, who introduced final month he’d step down from his function within the coming months after greater than 13 years on the firm. Panay will begin at Amazon on the finish of October, and Limp will keep on to help with the transition. Panay will report on to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, and can be part of Jassy’s S-team, a tight-knit group of senior executives throughout many areas of the corporate’s companies.
“As a powerful product builder and inventor who has deep expertise in each {hardware} and built-in providers, Panos might be an awesome addition to our D&S group shifting ahead,” Jassy wrote in a memo to workers.
Limp wrote in a separate memo that he is “identified Panos for years,” including that “he might be an awesome addition to this group shifting ahead.”
Panay oversaw the corporate’s worthwhile Home windows operating-system enterprise, in addition to the Floor line of gadgets, most of which had been Home windows PCs. Earlier this month, Microsoft mentioned Panay would go away the corporate after greater than 20 years.
Panay is becoming a member of Amazon at a precarious second for its gadgets and providers division. As a part of Jassy’s wider effort to rein in prices, he has axed a number of of the corporate’s extra unproven bets, together with a video-calling system for youths and a roving sidewalk robotic. The unit was hit with layoffs as a part of the biggest job cuts in Amazon’s historical past, which resulted in additional than 27,000 workers being let go.
Morale has suffered inside the {hardware} division amid the layoffs and a perceived lack of main product developments, Reuters reported, citing interviews with present and former workers.
—CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this text.
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