Microsoft enjoying epic year

Microsoft is enjoying an 'epic year' alongside the scale of the release of Windows 95 as the company embarks on one of its biggest series of launches in history.

That's the view of CEO Steve Ballmer who believes the release of Windows 8 surpasses that of Windows 95, as the company continues to enjoy a "healthy" PC market and make use of its potential.

In an interview with The Seattle Times, Ballmer spoke at length about the new products and services on offer, the current state of play at Microsoft and their plans for the future and beyond.

"You know, Windows 95 was certainly the biggest thing in the last 20 years until now," Ballmer says.

"I think Windows 8 certainly surpasses it.

"It's a little hard to compare things like the founding (of the company) and the introduction of the first popular PC and the system that popularized it, but it's at that scale.

"We're trying to really re-imagine the world from the ground up with Windows 8.

"And then people orient their development schedules around Windows 8 and its new properties and attributes."

Despite apparent concerns over the current state of the PC global market, Ballmer says Microsoft remain confident in its ability to generate huge profits, possessing no doubts over its longevity.

"People talk about: "How healthy is the PC market?", he says.

"There's going to be close to 400m PCs sold in the next year, which makes it a big market.

"And whether it's 405m or 395m, it's a big market, and Windows 8 will propel that volume.

"It also brings us into this world of much more mobile computing and more mobile form factors.

"I think it's going to be hard to tell what's a tablet and what is a PC."

After enjoying success with Xbox and Kinect features, the company endured struggles with there acquisitions such as Kin and aQuantive with Ballmer believing the company has learnt lessons across the board as it seeks future improvements within the industry.

"I think if you look at the pattern of success, it usually is a powerful, innovative idea formed and driven by a powerful sort of team with great innovators and great executors ... followed up by an incredible kind of — I won't say marketing because it's really more about how you tell your story than just how loudly you tell it," he says.

"Screaming loudly doesn't work very well in our industry.

"It really matters whether the product fundamentally captures people's imagination, and then you tell the story well around that.

"I certainly see Skype sort of on that path. ... We'll have to see whether Surface is a success or not because we haven't shipped any yet.

"But it certainly has the elements of success."

As the company continues to enjoy the success of 2012 approaching the US fall season, Ballmer offered an insight into 2013 and beyond for the technology giants.

"First of all, I'd say: pre-eminent technology company," he says.

"I think that in a back-looking view, people would say we were a software company.

"That's kind of how we were born.

"I think when you look forward, our core capability will be software, (but) you'll probably think of us more as a devices-and-services company.

"Which is a little different.

"Software powers devices and software powers these cloud services, but it's a different form of delivery and it doesn't mean we have to make every device.

"I don't want you to leap to that conclusion.

"We'll have partners who make devices with our software in it and our services built in.

"We're going to be a leader at that."

To read the full-length interview with The Seattle Times click here

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