Microsoft moved Tuesday to reboot for a mobile future, naming Indian-born Satya Nadella chief executive as founder Bill Gates shed his title of chairman for a more hands-on role.

Gates "will devote more time to the company" in his new role on the board as "founder and technology advisor," a company statement said.

Nadella, 46, who becomes the third CEO at Microsoft, has been executive vice president of its Cloud and Enterprise group.

The moves come with Microsoft losing ground to rivals like Apple and Google amid a shift away from the traditional personal computer to mobile devices and cloud services.

"As the industry changes we have to innovate and move forward," Gates said in a video released on the Microsoft website.

"I'm thrilled that Satya has asked me to step up. I'll have over a third of my time available to meet with product groups."

The 58-year-old Gates said that "during this time of transformation, there is no better person to lead Microsoft than Satya Nadella."

He called Nadella "a proven leader with hard-core engineering skills, business vision and the ability to bring people together."

Gates stepped down as CEO in 2000 and left day-to-day operations in 2008 to devote more time to his multibillion-dollar Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Microsoft said John Thompson, lead independent director, will assume the job of chairman at the tech giant.

Nadella, who takes over from the retiring Steve Ballmer, said, "Microsoft is one of those rare companies to have truly revolutionized the world through technology, and I couldn't be more honored to have been chosen to lead the company."

He added, "The opportunity ahead for Microsoft is vast, but to seize it, we must focus clearly, move faster and continue to transform. A big part of my job is to accelerate our ability to bring innovative products to our customers more quickly."

The shake-up at Microsoft drew positive responses from analysts.

"I think this is a terrific development for the company," said Greg Sterling at Opus Research.

"Nadella also seems to have encouraged the new Gates role, which will be good for the company too. Personally, Nadella is a more humble and understated figure than Ballmer, which will be good for the company's image. I also think Nadella brings a strong mix of business and technology expertise to the role."

Frank Gillett at Forrester Research said Nadella has shown "a willingness to shake things up, so that seems positive to us."

Gillett added that by using Gates as a key advisor, "he's reaching for Gates's experience in running the company but also in the successes in that era. But by having him in an informal role, it also says we are in a new era. All in all, it seems quite positive."

Roger Kay at Endpoint Technologies Associates said Nadella will need to articulate a vision for Microsoft, which under Ballmer was undergoing a transformation from software to "devices and services."

"Nadella has to come up with the vision," Kay said. "Gates's vision was appropriate for the 1970s and 1980s."

Kay said Nadella "admits that he is green in asking support from Gates but that's OK. I think people can come into a job green and grow into it."

Nadella "has been the enterprise guy, so I would expect him to go in that direction. They may even spin off the consumer business."

Deutsche Bank analyst Karl Keirstead said Nadella was a "good choice."

"Although Microsoft is a big ship to turn, in our view Nadella will push to make Microsoft more innovative and agile, more like Apple and less like IBM," Keirstead said in a research note.

Matthew Hedberg at RBC Capital Markets called Nadella "a safe choice" and said his background "could mean a bigger emphasis on cloud and enterprise than Microsoft has had in the past."

Hedberg added that the shift in roles for Gates would be a "bigger positive for investor sentiment."

In late morning trading, Microsoft shares were up 0.33 percent at $36.60.

Nadella heads the team that runs the public, private and service provider clouds for Microsoft. Previously, Nadella was president of Microsoft's $19 billion server and tools business.

He is a native of Hyderabad, India and earned degrees from Mangalore University, the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee and the University of Chicago.

Microsoft turns to cricket lover from India for CEO
San Francisco (AFP) Feb 04, 2014 - As a boy growing up in Hyderabad, India, Satya Nadella so loved the sport of cricket that he played competitively on his school team.

Now he is the top player on the team at Microsoft, the aging US technology colossus where he has worked for nearly half of his 46 years of life.

"I think playing cricket taught me more about working in teams and leadership that has stayed with me throughout my career," the newly chosen Microsoft chief executive said in his online company biography.

Early in his academic career, a drive to build things led him to pursue computer science, a focus not available during his studies at Mangalore University, where he earned a bachelor degree in electrical engineering.

For a master's degree in computer science, he went to the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. Nadella earned a second master's degree in business at the University of Chicago.

"The one think I would say that defines me is that I love to learn," Nadella said in a video interview posted by Microsoft.

"I buy more books than I read, or finish; I sign up for more online courses than I actually finish."

In a sign of what may be to come for Microsoft stalwarts, Nadella spoke emphatically of his passion for learning and admiration for those who find creative new approaches or ideas.

Nadella says that for Microsoft to succeed, it needs to adapt to new trends.

"While we have seen great success, we are hungry to do more," he said in an email to employees.

"Our industry does not respect tradition -- it only respects innovation. This is a critical time for the industry and for Microsoft. Make no mistake, we are headed for greater places -- as technology evolves and we evolve with and ahead of it."

Nadella's first tech industry job was with California-based Sun Microsystems. He was hired by Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft in 1992 while he was working on his business degree.

"I used to fly to Chicago Friday nights, attend classes Saturdays and come back to Redmond to work during the week," Nadella said.

It was also about that time that he married a woman he had known since high school. They have been married 22 years and have three children.

When he joined Microsoft, Nadella was one of two Indian employees at a company that had about 160 workers at the time, Indian-American technology entrepreneur and academic Vivek Wadhwa wrote in a piece published in the Economic Times.

Wadhwa credited Nadella with helping turn Microsoft's PowerPoint division into a billion-dollar business.

Nadella's Microsoft bio shows stints in research, business, server and online services units.

Nadella is credited with leading Microsoft's shift from the fading packaged software business to the booming market for software offered online as services.

Microsoft built its empire on Windows, Office, Word and other software sold in packages and installed on the vast majority of computers worldwide.

But, a trend to renting software hosted in the Internet "cloud" and accessed increasing using smartphones or tablet computers has knocked the legs out from under Microsoft's traditional business model.

For relaxation, Nadella turns to Indian and American poetry, which he likened to complex data being encoded and compressed to express rich ideas in just a couple of lines of words.

He is also a fan of cricket test matches that pit representative teams from countries against one another in games that typically span days.

"I love it," Nadella said of cricket test matches. "There's so many subplots in it, it's like reading a Russian novel."

In an email to Microsoft workers, Nadella was already rallying his team. He told them that he joined Microsoft to change the world, and that the company has the talent, resources and perseverance to do just that.