Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer, was in Asia in May speaking to developers, customers, partners and students at events in Japan, China, Korea and India. Ballmer enthused about Microsoft’s upcoming products and services in Asia, including Windows 8. The following is a transcript of a speech he gave at the 9th annual Seoul Digital Forum.
It's a real honor and privilege for me to have a chance to be here again at the Seoul Digital Forum, and I want to thank
SBS (a leading national broadcasting network in Korea) and all of the conference organisers for this opportunity.
I last attended this conference in 2006, and certainly the world has changed a lot since then. If you think back, words like
Twitter and
Facebook were unknown even in 2006, and here we sit and we talk about the next three, four, five years of incredible innovation.
I want to share with you just a few things that we're excited about, and frankly I think all of our industry is excited about. I think they fall nicely under the word ‘coexistence’, and yet in this industry in some sense bringing together disparate things into a united whole often makes the whole much bigger, more exciting and compelling than any of the parts. So, I'm going to talk a little bit about that and then I'll have a chance to show you some of our showcase products, which are meant to help lead this next generation of exciting innovation.
As we at
Microsoft reflect on the priorities that guide us in our own
R&D, we spend about $10 billion a year; it's a lot of money. Some of it succeeds wildly all at once, while some of it takes longer to build and gestate. We have a lot of brilliant engineers that exist in all the companies in this room and in many other parts of the world, doing creative and innovative work. And yet we can orient their priorities around five key themes that I think will be fundamental to the future of this industry.
The first one I insist on referring to as ‘machine learning’ as opposed to ‘big data’.
Big data refers to the notion that we have so much more information available than ever before, but the truth of the matter is that the benefit of data will come from learning, and the most important learning going forward is not just human insight but the insight that machines processing large amounts of data can give us.
This will apply in so many aspects of computing. At Microsoft we think about the evolution of the user interface to phones, to TVs, to PCs. We also want the computer to learn about the world, its applications, its data, its content, we want your system to learn about you and your interests and your intent, and we want the system to learn to pull those data together for you, effectively serving you every day on your phone, your TV and your PC.
The second area of innovation I want to highlight is in form factors and user interface. We can think with each revolution—first the PC, then graphical user interface and the mouse, then mobile and touch—that just as we get excited that maybe that's the last major breakthrough in the design of devices and user interface, something else comes through. And we're excited about what the next four or five years will bring as vision and voice recognition, as next generation video display and presence and motion sensors come to the fore, we see the evolution of the PC, the phone, the TV and the basic way in which we control and manage these systems, the basic ways in which we project data to ourselves continues to evolve.
Number three is the cloud, and, of course, everybody talks about the cloud. Yet I think people are still underestimating its impact. When people first talked about it, the cloud was a place to deliver a couple of traditional applications in a new way. The cloud became a set of technologies that were really all about redoing and revolutionising the way data center and Internet data center computing works.
I think the thing where we've only scratched the surface though is in the design and development of new applications that could not have existed without the cloud as a large scale computing resource.
You see that a little bit in the discussion of big data applications. You certainly see that in products like Twitter and Facebook. These are new applications that were born of the cloud and could not exist without the cloud, and I think there's at least 10 years of innovation on how to exploit that.
Next are the core platforms or ecosystems. The world is becoming less fragmented, not more. The number of core platforms around which software developers will do their innovation is not ever broadening, it's really a quite small and focused number: Windows, various forms of Linux, the Apple ecosystem. Certainly at Microsoft,
Windows is our core platform for the cloud, the server, the phone, and increasingly in applications that you might run on other devices, and I think as we look back three, four, five years from now there will be just a few ecosystems that really reach critical mass and flourish.
Last but not least is the emphasis on new scenarios. Our industry spends a lot more time talking about how to change that which already exists rather than inventing new things. How do we make a faster processor, how do we put more cores into the work, how do we go from resolution A to resolution B, how do we add 3D? And yet the real innovation that will propel the industry forward is changing the way people really live and work.
I'll spend time later today talking with a number of educators here in Korea about how we use IT to change the way people access information and learn. With the tools that we have today we can reengineer the way people learn, the way people meet: online collaboration and social networking, tools like
Skype that can put you and a set of information face-to-face with anybody on the planet, with new note-taking technologies and new devices.
I'm so happy to be here, but I live for the day when we all agree that digital technology is just as good as having someone like me give this speech.
I see papers and pencils and books in the audience, and I say, why is that, why have we not designed the technology that makes all of that and much, much more obsolete?
There's a lot of invention that will go into the new scenarios that actually aren't just about the technology, platforms and devices, but the new applications which really affect the way we work and the way we live.
For us this is an extremely important year. This is the launch year for
Windows 8. What's Windows 8? It's an operating system after Windows 7! I guess that's kind of obvious. And yet saying it that way in a sense almost understates how much change and innovation and re-imagination, as we like to say, has gone into Windows 8.
We first shipped Microsoft Windows in 1985, almost 30 years ago. And we improved it, we made it support new hardware, we added new input techniques. This year, there will be 350 million Windows 7 devices shipped in the world. It makes Windows the most popular single system, electronic smart device system on the planet. It's right there: Android, Windows, phones and PCs. Those are popular, popular systems. And yet after all this time it was clear to us after we shipped Windows 7 that it was time to take a step back and ask, what would it really take to have Windows stay the platform from Microsoft, this key ecosystem, for the next 30 years?
We said, hey, look, Windows has to be able to support touch and pen, in addition to mouse and keyboard. Now, you could say that's a small thing but no other system out there today really supports all the inputs. Windows had to be able to support tablets, as well as PCs and notebooks. Windows had to be able to support very small devices and very small screens, up to very large devices and very large screens. I have a new 81-inch Windows 8 slate. It's not very portable, but it's actually quite valuable.
We needed to support applications that were functional, that let you do real work, and applications that were beautiful and let you relax and entertain yourself.
We needed to support existing applications, and we had to support the generation of a new style of applications, applications that are modern in their embrace of HTML and JavaScript and Internet standards.
We had to support people in their personal lives and in their professional lives.
We put that all together and we had a lot of work to do.
On top of it we said fundamental to this we'll be supporting not only X86 processors but also ARM processors.
You put all of that together and it's really in some sense the dawning of a rebirth of Microsoft Windows.
The Korea Economic Daily has said it will be a game-changer. It's certainly the most important piece of work we've done. And there's a new Windows Phone that goes with the new Windows 8, there will be a new set of devices from our hardware partners that go with Windows 8, there's a new
Office and a new
Bing and a new
Zune and a new Skype that goes with Windows 8. There's a new server and virtualisation system, there's a new cloud infrastructure for
Windows Azure, all of which are supported on the back of this Windows 8 re-imagination.
Now, I talk about it because I know Windows is a Microsoft product, and yet the Windows ecosystem is much bigger than Microsoft. The number of semiconductor companies and system companies and software companies that participate in this ecosystem is quite large.
Windows 8 is the deepest, broadest, most impactful release of Windows we've ever done. We have hardware partners who will make incredible new tablets, notebooks and slates, and wall-size devices, phones and many others running processors from Qualcomm and NVIDIA, from TI, from Intel, and from AMD. And I think it will be absolutely amazing.
I think there's also never been a better time to be not only working with Windows, but there's never been a better time to be in this industry. We see a lot of activity here in Korea. In the last three years we've been involved with over 600 startup companies and we've contributed over $60 million of software to help those businesses get off the ground. And we think it's that kind of innovation and creativity, applied against the big opportunities, machine learning, form factors, Windows 8 and new scenarios that will really power this industry.
With something like 400 to 500 million users expected in the next year, the best economic activity for people building machines, and the best economic opportunity for people writing applications will be around Windows. And, as we've said, from small to medium, to large, to portable, it's a phenomenal opportunity.
I appreciate the opportunity to participate again at this Seoul Digital Forum. Thank everybody for your time today, and I particularly want to thank SBS, again, for this opportunity. It's been my pleasure.
The Seoul Digital Forum is a major international conference about innovation and inspiration placed broadly in the context of the digital age. Each year, the event attracts many of the world’s most influential people from the T.I.M.E.+ (Technology, Information, Media, Entertainment) industries and from other areas high on the global agenda to explore and collaborate in shaping our future. Established in 2004 as a non-profit event, the Forum is organized by SBS, a leading national broadcasting network in Korea.