Poaching season in mobile: Vodafone grabs Microsoft’s mobility leader Knook

Pieter Knook, the leader of Microsoft Corp.’s mobile business and an 18-year company veteran, has jumped ship to Vodafone Group plc.
Knook will lead the operator’s efforts in consumer Internet services, Vodafone said Thursday at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
Vodafone, based in the United Kingdom, is stepping up its work on nascent revenue sources in mobile advertising and linkages between wired computing and mobile devices, according to media reports.
Both Microsoft and Motorola Inc. have lost key executives in the past month, though likely for very different reasons.
Knook’s departure – he will join Vodafone in early March – will lead to a reshuffling of mobile executives at Microsoft, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.
But Knook’s move comes at a time when the computing giant is working hard to expand its own mobile business.
The Redmond, Wash.-based firm just acquired Danger Inc., which makes software that powers the Sidekick and Hiptop messaging-centric devices popular among a young demographic largely served by T-Mobile USA Inc. in the United States. That could jump-start Microsoft’s efforts outside the prosumer/enterprise market where it has been focused and only incrementally successful.
Microsoft has been working to make its Windows Mobile operating system more ubiquitous and just cut a deal with Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications to get the OS onto certain SEMC smartphones. Microsoft also has an investment in Enterprise Mobile, a new startup designed to meet the enterprise’s mobile needs and to fulfill business secured by the computing giant.
Another Microsoft veteran, Andrew Lees, an executive in the company’s server business, may replace Knook as the face of the company’s wireless efforts, according to the WSJ.
In another recent case of executive poaching, distributor Brightpoint Inc., in mid-January hired Bashar Nejdawi, the senior director of Motorola Inc.’s global distribution business, to run its new “enhancements” business. Brightpoint on Monday announced that its enhancements business would install Google Search and Google Maps on smartphones distributed to its 25,000 B2B customers.
Microsoft is looking to expand its markets beyond personal computing and, like other non-traditional wireless companies, it sees potential in mobile communications as well as Internet search engines such as Yahoo Inc., for which it has made an offer, since rebuffed. Motorola, on the other hand, is under the gun financially and analysts have predicted that some executive talent may seek opportunities elsewhere.