Since the death of Windows Phone, Microsoft has had this weird romance with Android. Some Microsoft apps run on Android phones, there’s the Windows Launcher, and we can’t forget about the Surface Duo devices. Also, there’s Android app integration on Windows 11 with Google Play Games coming soon. So far, these ventures all seem scattered.
Microsoft established a dedicated Android division
Now, however, Microsoft is looking to consolidate these ventures. The company CPO, Panos Panay told Windows Central “Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis. We recently made an organizational change to accelerate our impact and better serve our customers and partners.” Basically, the company is taking all of the separate sections dedicated to certain Android operations and combining them into one division. This division is called the Android Microsoft Platform Experiences of AMPX for short. This involved moving some people to different parts of the company. Even though Microsoft is mostly known for Windows and Xbox, it’s also dipped more than a few fingers into the Android space. It has the SwiftKey app, Phone Link (formerly Your Phone), the Microsoft Launcher, several Microsoft Office apps, and 73 other apps on the Google Play Store. We also can’t forget the effort to refine the Surface Duo phones and the work to bring Android apps to Windows 11. With a new division, some leaders within the company received new positions. Ali Akgun will be the leader of the AMPEX group. He was the previous CVP of the Surface division. What’s fortunate is that no one was let go from their jobs with this transition.
What should we expect to change?
Right now, it’s tough to say if we’ll see any tangible differences. On one side, it looks like Microsoft is just doing some housekeeping and combining the divisions. However, putting all of those divisions under one head might bring some changes to Microsoft’s Android endeavors. The fact that it’s putting the effort into establishing a dedicated division could, hopefully, mean that it’s going to be working more on Android products. Hopefully, we’ll see better software optimization for the Surface Duos and improvements to the Phone Link app.
