How Nokia And Elop Will Fold Into Microsoft

The return of prodigal Nokia CEO Stephen Elop to Microsoft’s executive team as part of the acquisition of Nokia’s handset and services unit is raising questions about Elop’s role within Microsoft moving forward, both near-term and long-term, as well as how this will affect Microsoft’s recent “One Microsoft” management reorganization scheme.

Under the One Microsoft plan, all operating systems were merged into a single Operating Systems group under Terry Myerson. Qi Lu heads up the new Application and Services group (which handles products like Bing, Office, Exchange, SharePoint and Skype) and Satya Nadella runs the Cloud and Enterprise group, overseeing Windows Server and Azure, among other products.

But the person most effected by today’s news will be Julie Larson-Green, who was named as lead for the Devices and Studios group as part of the One Microsoft plan. Larson-Green’s team was to handle Surface, Xbox, games and entertainment development and production. Now, it seems, Larson-Green may be seeing her role as executive VP getting diminished already.

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