Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on Window's New Vista
Monday, January 29, 2007SUSIE GHARIB: Microsoft's new Windows Vista operating system goes on sale at midnight tonight. It will be available in boxes that consumers can use to upgrade the computers they already own. But most copies will come preinstalled on new computers to be sold in the months and years ahead. Vista includes many advances designed to make personal computers more reliable and secure. But as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer explained today to New York bureau chief Scott Gurvey, it also contains new features consumers have been demanding.
STEVE BALLMER, CEO, MICROSOFT: For your average consumer end user just picking up a new PC or a new copy of Vista installing, I think the thing that will really pop is the user interface and how much more exciting, how much easier it is. The new features, particularly in the entertainment area, if you take a look at what you can do with photos, what you can do with movies, what you can do with you know, kind of HD and everything around that.
SCOTT GURVEY, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: Are you getting indications yet about how many upgrades are pent up out there? There were a lot of orders put in for upgrade copies?
BALLMER: It will stand by two things. We have about 200 million copies of Windows and Vista we hope to get out, in aggregate, consumer plus business over the course of '07. Another way to think about it from our perspective is, we think we'll wind up with about twice as many copies of Windows Vista in the market within three months after it ships, as it compared to say Windows XP and probably five times as many as compared to Windows 95.
GURVEY: You see the upgrade revenue and you also see people buying new computers because they're waiting for Vista to come along?
BALLMER: Absolutely. In the -- if history is any experience, most users who wind up with Vista will wind up because they bought a new computer with Vista on it. That doesn't mean that there won't be millions of people who upgrade existing computers, but the bulk will come with new computers. Both of those phenomenon at least my initial anticipation will be quite robust.
GURVEY: What about the reaction from the developers? And I have been looking a little bit at what's going on under the covers. And one of the products that's coming that I have just begun working with is the Expressions suite. And you're taking this new interface and if I'm reading this right, you're making it available in part -- I mean, through the web browsers with the Windows presentation foundation everywhere and that means something that's not going to be so platform dependent going forward. Is that a trend? I mean, something we're going to see more of?
BALLMER: I think what you will see is a variety of different, what we might call application development patterns. Sometimes the developer says, hey, I just want my software, my experience to show up everywhere. Many websites have that characteristic. Some people say, hey, I've got to give my end user the absolute best experience and I'm willing to really get close and take advantage of the unique capabilities of the platform whether it's Windows or Mac or whatever the case may be. We need to make sure we have technologies that support kind of both of those models, if you will.
GURVEY: And it changes the business model a little bit, too, if more and more of the applications are supportable in a platform independent kind of way.
BALLMER: I think still, the most important applications to many people will have a platform dependent component.
GURVEY: Let me look at some of the other news in the industry. Apple made a big splash with its iPhone. Microsoft has been writing software with Windows mobile for phones for quite some time.
BALLMER: With Windows mobile, we're now selling tens of millions of devices a year that have more processing, more screening, more capability and actually, between we and Nokia, we're really the two market leaders. Then you have some guys like RIMM with the Blackberry, Palm, now Apple trying to get into the game. But we think we really have very much a head start in that business.
GURVEY: Do you see yourself doing hardware or -- hardware for phones, in the future or will it be strictly the software?
BALLMER: We're quite comfortable with our innovation model in phones which involves bringing software experiences, both on the device and potentially with Internet service, into an environment which there are a lot of innovative companies, Motorola, Samsung, HTC, Azus (ph). There's many, many innovative companies. And I think much the way the PC industry flourished with a lot of hardware innovators and a lot of software innovators, we think that will be important in this phone market.
GURVEY: All right. Thank you.
BALLMER: Thank you very much.
