Joachim Kempin, a Microsoft senior vice president who played a role in the company's landmark antitrust trial, is stepping down from his high-profile job managing Microsoft's relations with computer makers.
Kempin, a 17-year Microsoft veteran, will move into a job overseeing "special projects" for Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, company officials said.
His replacement will be Richard Roy, general manager of the company's German subsidiary. Roy won't take on his new responsibilities until July 1, the start of Microsoft's fiscal year.
The company said neither Kempin nor Roy was available for comment. Roy isn't expected to move to the US until the summer, and it is unclear whether he will join the company's "business-leadership team," the small group that advises Ballmer on major business issues.
The reassignments were announced inside the software company a few weeks ago in an internal memo circulated by Orlando Ayala, head of world-wide sales and marketing. Roy will report to Ayala and have the critical job of overseeing the sales and marketing of Microsoft software to personal-computer makers, such as Dell and Compaq.
About a quarter of Microsoft's software sales come from products that are sold to PC makers and pre-installed on their machines, as opposed to software licensed directly to companies or sold in stores.
That job put Kempin in the hot seat last year when he was grilled by government lawyers in Washington about whether Microsoft punished PC makers who gave prominent placement to rival software on their machines.
It was a major issue in Microsoft's antitrust battle with the government, which is still before the courts. Microsoft is appealing a June ruling from US District Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson that the company illegally used its Windows monopoly to try to dominate new software markets.
But the newest executive moves -- and the fact that Roy will report to Ayala and not Chief Executive Steve Ballmer, as Kempin did -- are perhaps another indication of how Microsoft's business model is shifting away from licensing individual software products and toward selling Internet-based services.
That shift is a tricky one: As it scrambles to develop new Web products, many of them years away from launch, Microsoft is trying to squeeze as much revenue as possible out of its traditional Windows and Office products, which already have a tremendous base of users.
That could become even harder in the next few months in light of the global economic slowdown that is hurting sales at many computer-related companies. Last week, for the first time since 1989, Microsoft issued an early profit warning to analysts, saying revenue is likely to fall 5 percent to 6 percent below forecasts for the quarter ending December 31.
