Joe Belfiore is an American corporate executive. He has served in a variety of positions at Microsoft, primarily in the area of user experience. He presently holds the position of Corporate Vice President for Microsoft’s Experiences and Devices division. Joe Belfiore is a prominent speaker who has attended numerous Microsoft conferences and frequently performs live demos for the company’s products.
Joe Belfiore will be leaving Microsoft after serving the company for over 32 years. His internal email to staff (via ZDNet) announcing his retirement plans was eventually made public on Twitter. Belifore is best known as the face of Windows Phone, From 2009 until 2013, under his co-leadership of that division, Microsoft acquired Nokia. After that, Belfiore oversaw the Windows 10 division for over five years.
“Today I shared with my team that after 32 fantastic years, I will be retiring from Microsoft. I’m staying on until summer to help with the transition, then focus on the two kids still at home and the 1 who just started college”, Belifore wrote in a tweet on Friday.
Belfiore began working on the Windows Phone in 2009 and oversaw the creation of the Metro user interface, for which the platform is most known and which eventually appeared in Windows 8. With Windows 10, Joe Belfiore shifted to overseeing platform development for all types of consumer devices, namely Windows 10 PCs, tablets, and Windows 10 Mobile.
One may easily recall Microsoft’s initial promises and eventual disappointments while discussing Windows Phone. The platform for Windows Phone has always been a little shaky. Belfiore initially promised that Windows Phone 7 handsets could be upgraded to Windows Phone 8, however, this fell short, disappointing many users at the time.
The bulk of Nokia Lumia devices was also left behind during the switch from Windows Phone 8.1 to Windows 10 Mobile, despite Microsoft having initially said that most or all of the current Windows Phone 8.1 devices will be supported. Microsoft originally owned Nokia’s Lumia mobile phone division, which it acquired in 2013 for $7.6 billion.
However, the experiment was a failure, which caused the corporation considerable embarrassment. Belfiore eventually acknowledged in 2016 that Windows 10 Mobile would only continue to receive security updates going forward, with no new features. Windows has since turned its attention mostly to desktops.
Belfiore, who was born in Florida, fell in love with computers as a young child after using a Timex Sinclair 1000 that belonged to the father of a neighboring kid. He completed his schooling in 1986 at Clearwater Central Catholic High School. Later, he enrolled at Stanford University, where he earned a bachelor’s in computer science in 1990.
Joe Belfiore’s career and method of product design have both been motivated by empathy. Products must be created with the actual user in mind if they are to truly affect people’s lives. At Microsoft, Belfiore promoted a useful story-based strategy that invites customers to engage in product design and testing which completely altered interface and product design operation.
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