Steve Ballmer Speech Transcript – Pocket PC Launch

Remarks by Steve Ballmer
Pocket PC Launch
New York
April 19, 2000

(Video presentation.)

(Applause.)

STEVE BALLMER: Thats quite some video.Ive got to admit I hadn’t seen it before and Im not sure the guy in that video has as much hair as I do.

Let me first thank everybody for taking the time and joining us today, particularly in this rather unusual venue.Im slightly concerned right this minute that you can hear me, but we thought, what better place to introduce the ultimate tool for the mobile professional, than the sort of most emblematic place in the world for the mobile professional, which is right here at Grand Central terminal?With a little bit of luck, that will prove to have been a wise decision and youll be able to hear and see everything. But we certainly knew this would be very central.

This is an important day for us and a very, very important launch.We have been at it, so to speak, with handheld devices now for a number of years.Weve had some success, but certainly weve not had the kind of presence and success in the marketplace and the ability to inspire and excite consumers with the devices that weve had in the marketplace that we wish we had had.And we think the new version of the Pocket PC, which were launching today, available today, really takes just an incredible quantum leap forward and were very proud of the device.Were very excited.And we think consumers will agree with us that the new Pocket PC is an incredibly interesting and important device.

Before we show you the device, talk a little bit about the new software, show you some of the things that can be done and have a chance to hear from some of our partners and customers, I want to put this device in the context of our overall strategy.

For the first 23 or so, 24 years of Microsofts existence, we talked about putting a computer on every desk and in every home as mission one.It was the vision.It was what we were all about. And it became very focused in on the notion of the PC as the only device that people would ever need.And there was a lot of merit to that.We now have a world of about 500 million PCs.That will grow by about 125 million PCs in the next year alone.But it is certainly clear to us and has been clear for the last several years that as we look to the next 25 years, while the PC will remain an important, essential, fundamental device, there will be handheld, wireless devices and there will be TV-based devices that will also become extremely, extremely important.

And as we talk about our vision and mission for the next 25 years, we talk about empowering people through software, any time, any place and on any device.

As we think about what will be the key elements to achieve that level of empowerment, we think not only of the new devices, we think about not just todays Internet experience, but the experience that people will want in the future on the Internet.We sometimes refer to that as the next generation Internet experience.Think through what will it be like five years from now, ten years from now, to use the Internet.Will we still really be thinking just about browsers and HTML 3.2 and Web pages, or will we be talking about a much richer experience, an experience where you will expect to go from your handheld device, you will expect to be able to check your flight — is it on time, is it late, send notification, whatever that means, to the person that youre visiting, make sure that the Web site on which you booked your travel notifies the hotel that your flight is late, dont cancel your reservation, or your flight is so late, as mine was last night, that they should absolutely cancel your reservation, theres no reason to pay for the darn room.

But thats the kind of experience people will want — Web sites talking to Web sites, PCs and other devices participating in a rich way, events, rules, all moving seamlessly from the PC experience through these servers across the Internet to these wireless devices.

And as we think about that world, we see a world of hundreds and hundreds of millions of PCs, but also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of millions of handheld wireless devices from the thinnest client, which we can think of as the cell phone, to a little bit thicker client, which we can think of as the kind of PDA device that the Pocket PC represents, on to thicker devices still, which you can think of as todays laptop or I might think of as tomorrows tablet PCs, which would be an order of magnitude this size with a bigger screen, with a full hard disk, et cetera, but those kinds of wireless handheld devices will be absolutely critical in this next generation Internet experience.

Everybodys got their own predictions, but certainly, heres some IDC numbers.If you take a look at and you ask the number of intelligent — that is not — not just thin cell phones, but intelligent, smart, mobile devices, whats going to happen to that market, I think theres no disagreement, no matter whose numbers you believe, that its going to explode, absolutely explode over the next several years.

I certainly regret the fact that were not farther ahead in this marketplace, but were still talking about a market that last year was only about four million units and even this year will only be about six million units and is expected over the next four years to grow tenfold.

The opportunity in this category, the opportunities to have this category participate in a broader set of Internet infrastructure are really still before us.And thats why were so excited to have the right device to introduce today.

There were many, many things that I think were very good about the palm-sized PCs that we introduced in the past.We got a great number of things right and we got some things really wrong.

What did we get really right?We built a device that had a general-purpose operating system in it, that allows for a kind of expandability, flexibility, new applications, custom applications, new hardware.We worked with our hardware partners to design an expandable device, inheriting many of the best features of the personal computer in its expandability, in the fact that you could add in corporate applications, your own custom applications, new hardware.That was great and I think that was a real breakthrough.

But we missed on some things.We built a product with our partners that had great expandability, but we didnt necessarily always execute well on the basics.Small form factors, very simple, high quality, easy to use, PIM functionality: some of the basics of the user experiences werent exactly what they needed to be;

Handhelds that could use a hand,” as an example of a quote about some of the work in the past.

So the key is to take the best of what we had, an expandable, powerful device — where I think we have certain advantages versus competition — and marry it with a set of capabilities that absolutely deliver on the core user, consumer experience in precisely the same way.

So what we would say we think we understand today and what we think the Pocket PC delivers on is, number one, that weve got to have the right user design, right form factor, right battery life, right screen, right size, right weight, right software. Simple, simple, simple.Weve got to have a PIM that is absolutely designed to be simple without compromise or we lose on the way through the door by making things more complicated than we should.

We still need to emphasize the importance of the expandability of the device from a hardware and a software standpoint.We think more, today than any day in the past — these devices have to do a good job of supporting real interaction with the Web, with the Internet and real wireless connectivity — not fake, half-baked connectivity, but real ability to connect to the Internet, to browse Web pages, to have full access to your e-mail wherever you happen to keep your e-mail.And we think weve done a good job, as youll see in that area.

This platform needs to be expandable, not only in a hardware sense, but a software sense, so people can really write enterprise applications for that retail application, that training application.The hotel clerk, who was running up and down in the middle of the night when I finally did arrive last night trying to let me in, he had some big device.He needs a Pocket PC with custom software written for the Hyatt to help him help me get into the room.We need this kind of expandability.

And last but not least, because people will only carry a single device, people are people.People work.People have contacts.People have information.But people like to have a little bit of fun.And so we tried to design a device that you can carry with you and it can be a source of entertainment and amusement, as well as a very productive and valuable aid in your business life.And the expandability from a hardware and software perspective is important to number six, to number five, to number four and to number three, and its really in number one and number two where we think weve come from where we were — a significant number of steps forward to a product that really delivers in a very fundamental way.

The first one I mentioned, the first thing we learned is: design matters.And so I want to show you some of the devices that we, in conjunction with our partners, have been working on and some of the improvements that have been made.

If you have a chance to look at the video here, well take a look at some of the devices you can see.We have four devices that were showing in the new Pocket PC form factor: a Compaq device, a device from Symbol, a device from Casio and the new HP Jornada devices all in the new Pocket PC form factor.This is the Casio device up here, the EM500.This device offers multimedia, a rich color LCD, slim, stylish design, pretty nice, and very bright colors for a younger market.

The Compaq devices, which will be available soon, are very expandable.They offer expansion packs for PCMCIA cards, flash memory, et cetera.Its very thin, only weighs about six ounces.And its a very fast device, running at 206 megahertz.

Symbol is a company well have a chance to hear from later.They do ruggedized devices, very good infrared support, bar coding support.They target a set of vertical markets.

And last but not least, a device — which youll be able to guy today if you want to in New York — this is the HP Jornada device that is now available.Very thin, quite stylish, a nice alloy case, detachable cover, and there will be a set of skins that you can put on this thing that allow it to expand and do additional things.So the HP Jornada device well come back to.Thats the one that people can certainly buy in stores in New York City today.

So that gives you a sense of a little bit at least what the hardware looks like –thinner, smaller, lighter weight, better battery life than any before.

And what Id like to do now is roll a videotape in which Michael Capellas, the President and CEO of Compaq, Jacques Play , vice president and general manager of the appropriate group at Hewlett Packard, and Gary Rado, president of Casio USA, all have a chance to talk a little bit about their enthusiasm for their new devices.

Roll the video, please.

(Video shown.)

STEVE BALLMER: So you get something of a sense not only of the enthusiasm of our partners, but also some of the amazing things the device can do.

What Id like to do now is invite on stage Ben Waldman, vice president and Brian Shafer, marketing manager of our Mobile Devices division, and I want them to help really bring to life for you the improvements weve made from a design and simplicity standpoint in the software.So please welcome Ben Waldman and Brian Shafer.

(Applause.)

BEN WALDMAN: Some people joke that it takes Microsoft until version three until it finally gets a product right.We think that thats two versions too many.But I can tell you that we worked very hard to learn from our mistakes.And so with Pocket PC, the third version of our software for handheld devices, youll see that we took a very different approach than weve taken in the past.We learned finally that the important thing was not to squeeze Windows down until it finally fit into a handheld device, but instead, to understand what people were trying to do with their devices, and then to help them do that more quickly, more easily and with more fun, and to use the familiarity of Windows as a move towards that end rather than as an end in itself.

What people are trying to do with these devices has just change so much over the last few years.In 1996, when the Palm Pilot was first introduced, many people hadnt even heard of the Internet.There was no such thing as MP3 digital music.So we knew that we had to create a device, which was not only able to empower people to do the things they wanted to do today, but was also flexible enough to grow with them and meet their needs in the future as well.

We began by speaking with thousands of customers and we learned some really interesting things.Almost three-quarters of the customers we spoke with, about 72 percent, told us that they wanted a device with software that would enable them to accomplish a wide variety of tasks.Sure, they wanted a device, which was easy to use, but they also wanted a device, which was powerful, expandable and versatile.Basically, they wanted simplicity but without compromises.

And so thats why we created Power PCs.Lets take a look.

At the heart of any handheld device is the PIM, the Personal Information Management applications.And so when you turn on a Pocket PC, the first thing youll notice is the today screen.Its one place where you can go to find out all the things that you need to do today, what e-mail you have, what appointments you have, what tasks you need to accomplish.Simple, yet powerful.

Now, youll notice at the top of the screen we have the Start menu.Why do we have the Start menu at the top of the screen?Well, because in a handheld form factor we looked at how people were using these devices and we noticed that the human eye naturally goes to the top of the screen, so we put the Start menu, the place where people needed to start, at the top of the screen rather than the bottom.Different than a Windows desktop, but appropriate for a handheld device.

Now lets take a look at the appointments.Lets click on the appointments here and go to some of the appointments we have today.Now, youll see that the view here is actually pretty simple.It tells us only the things that we need to do today and doesnt clutter up space with other information that I dont need to know in my free time.Simple, yet powerful.

Now, we also like to provide the flexibility of people to look at data in any way they want to, so we also have an agenda view, which is similar to what people have in Microsoft Outlook.We also have daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly views to enable people to look at the information they want in any way they want to look at it.

Youll also notice that we have menus at the bottom of the screen.So why did we put the menus at the bottom of the screen?Because if the menus were at the top of the screen, when you wanted to go to click on a menu, your hand would be obscuring all your data, so you wouldnt be able to see the information you wanted to work with.So we put the menus at the bottom of the screen.Different than a personal computer, but appropriate for a handheld device.

So lets go now and take a look at our contacts.Now whether you have 50 contacts or 500 contacts, probably the most important thing is that you want people to find the information they want to look at as quickly as possible.So what weve done is built in some really powerful and intelligent click-find technology into our contact application.As we type out the letters that indicate which contact were looking for, the software automatically filters our contacts as were typing.And as I type the letters H-A-Y, without even hitting return, it automatically filtered all my contacts just to show me the ones where the last name begins with H-A-Y or the first name begins with H-A-Y.

Now, an important thing was that that be fast.We have over 1,000 contacts in this device, and you can see that it was pretty quick to filter down to just the appropriate records here.

Youll also notice that on the right-hand side we have some letters, W, E or H.And what those represent are the primary contact methods for contacting these people, whether we use the work phone number or their e-mail address or their home phone number.And if you want to change that, all you do is tap your stylus on the screen on the letter and it can change from work to a mobile number to a pager number all with just a single click of the mouse.

Now, if people want to take a look at a contact itself, what we do is just tap on it once.Again, different from a personal computer where you might double click, here we just click the mouse or we tap the stylus just once; more appropriate to a handheld device.

And youll notice that in this contact well only show you the information youve actually entered into the contact itself.We wont waste your screen real estate or complicate things by showing you information that you havent even entered, showing you a bunch of blank lines.Simple, yet powerful.

Now, we can take a look at some other contacts where weve entered far more information.In this contact weve entered about 30 different fields.Now you might wonder why does a handheld device, what does a contact manager on a handheld device need 30 different fields?Well, thats because Microsoft Outlook has all these fields in it, and one of our goals with Pocket PC was to create the perfect companion to Microsoft Outlook, so that you could synchronize your data between the device and Microsoft Outlook seamlessly and never lose any data going back and forth.And this is the only handheld device available today which can do that.

Now, we wanted to build a lot of functionality into the device, but at the same time, we had to make sure that this functionality was accessible, so people could find all the functionality that was available to the new device.We thought that reading a manual simply wasnt an option available in this device.And so what weve done is introduce a concept called
“Tap and Hold”
throughout the entire Pocket PC.Anytime you have a piece of data you can just tap your stylus on the data and hold it down and automatically a menu will pop up and tell you all the things that you can do with that piece of information.And, in fact, weve let third parties extend this menu as well.

So in the case of the contacts, you can see that I can send e-mail to that contact, send it via infrared just by clicking on the contact, a pretty fast way to do that.I can copy it or delete it, or interestingly, I can also exchange it with another Pocket PC or for the first time, beam this contact to a Palm Pilot and that will exchange data seamlessly with a Palm device as well.Again, for the first time, with a Pocket PC.

So next Im going to skip over our task management and our note taker and go right to our inbox application.Youll see that in the inbox application we made things also accessible and simple to use.Weve broken up our header into two different lines, so at the same time, at a single glance, you can see the subject line of an e-mail message, as well as who sent that e-mail message to you.

Now if we take a look at one e-mail message — heres a message thats been sent to me by my realtor, telling me about some great information about a house they just found for me.Now youll see that she said,
“Heres the new listings that are just in.”
And all the information is actually not contained in the e-mail message; its contained in the attachments that have been sent to me inside the e-mail message.

In our research, we found that about one in five e-mails contains an e-mail attachment and so we thought it would be pretty useful to people if they could actually read the information inside of their attachment.

So now if we single tap on the Word attachment, well launch Pocket Word.And inside Pocket Word, well not only be able to see the text of the Word document, well be able to see the graphics as well, and really understand the information that my realtor wanted to convey to me in this e-mail.Youll also see that my realtor attached an Excel spreadsheet in there and when I click on that, it launches Pocket Excel.And we can see the financial information that my realtor has provided to me, again with just a single tap of the mouse to Pocket Word and Pocket Excel built into the Pocket PC.

Now, if we want to go ahead and respond to the e-mail … lets go ahead and click reply and we can respond to the e-mail.

Now when we did our research with our customers, we found that everyone had their own preferred way of entering data into the device, and so we decided to support all those ways.Some people prefer to enter data with the keyboard, and so we provided a keyboard, and people can tap out different letters.And for many people thats the fastest way to enter data into their e-mail messages.Other people prefer to enter the data one letter at a time at the bottom of the screen; very similar to the way you did it with a Palm.The only difference here being that we dont require you to learn a new alphabet, to learn Graffiti.You can write letters just as youve been writing them ever since you were in first grade, although, of course, if you want to use Graffiti well support that as well.

Now, when we did our research, some people asked us,
“Well, why do I need to use these on-screen keyboards or these funny ways?Why cant I just write whatever I want across the screen and just have it work?Its a touch-sensitive screen after all.”
And we thought about it and we said,
“Yeah, it would be really neat if we could do that.”
And so we did that.So if we turn on the new Transcriber application here, which we just did, we can just go and write our response to this e-mail across the screen.Well write something like, to my realtor,
“Call me.”
And well just write it out here in our handwriting. And you can see that its recognized our handwriting, writing plain just on the screen here.And thats also a first here with Pocket PC.

So you can see that with Pocket PC we tried to provide ease of use, so the device is powerful, and at the same time, simple but without compromises in our PIM application, in the core, in the heart of Pocket PC.

Thank you.

(Applause.)

STEVE BALLMER: Were only at number two of the six things weve learned, but I think you get a lot of the feel from the demonstration that Brian and Ben just did, a faster, simpler user interface, complete Outlook integration with the PIM, a meaningful use of color and very natural interaction.A much, much, much simplified version of the PIM and a much more elegant overall user interface design for the core device.

I talked earlier about the expandability of this device being very important and certainly in this new generation of Pocket PC, we dont give anything up.This device is very expandable in terms of storage, where you can add Compact Flash, do Compact Flashdevices for storage, for communication and other special purpose devices.

Youll see announced today a range of communications options for wireless communications, storage devices that let you store more music, more e-mail, more Web pages down on the device, as well as software — well hear about some software from some of our corporate customers at SAP later today.But we have great expandability in these devices, based upon the software architecture and the expandable hardware architectures that we and our partners have agreed upon.

The fourth area of learning for us was the area of Web and wireless.And I dont think any of us can say enough about why this is important.In some senses Id say the most mission critical thing is, we looked to the growth in this category over the next five and ten years.The PIM is a starter point.Its essential.Its a source of great productivity.But these devices come alive as you start connecting them up in a wireless fashion to the Internet.

We think its important … a few key design points.Number one, you want to be able to access any Web site in an HTML 3.2 way.You dont want there to be any compromise against that, funny clippings or funny views.And so weve taken a different approach than the folks at Palm and really just built a Web browser into this Pocket PC.We both made it possible to optimize the content for this device type, but you can access absolutely any Web site.Weve designed the device so that you can have content, whether its a set of Web pages or a set of e-mail messages, fully available to you, whether youre online through a wireless connection or whether you want to take that information with you offline.

Weve built a range of security options into the Pocket PC, so that you can feel comfortable, for example, shopping and buying and ordering from this device.We think those scenarios will be very, very common in the wireless world.

Youll see today a choice of connectivity options for wireless connectivity, including CDPD connectivity, which is being announced today, use of your existing wireless phone, which is being announced and made available today, and a range of new connectivity options for wireless connections with this device.And weve really integrated the overall Web and wireless experience in with this.

We have a set of partners who were working with who will really — have really sort of signed up, and you can see some of their work in the Partner Pavilion.But the partners have really signed up to make the Pocket PC an integral part of the way they think about and market their services, people like Amazon, the New York Times, Altavista.Youll hear from TD Waterhouse about some of their new training applications.MSN Mobile information will be available in a nice form on Pocket PCs, Sony, AvantGo, and a number of other people.

So weve formed a set of partnerships to target this specifically and weve also made sure that you can access absolutely any Web site.

Im particularly excited about the relationships we have with Audible and the way in which weve built Clear Type in the Microsoft Reader technologies in here.I think it will be very common that people want to have the ability to take long documents with them and read them very conveniently as they have time, and the way weve done that with Audible for books in building in the basic technology, I think will wind up being quite important in the future.

Bens going to come back and have a chance to show you some of the Web and wireless capabilities.Ben.

BEN WALDMAN: There are a number of challenges involved in bringing the Web to handheld devices.Now, one way to solve those challenges is to say, is to restrict what parts of the Web people can access. To say,
“No, well only let you go to these parts of the Web.Oh, no, by the way, well only let you look at text, we wont let you look at graphics.”

Well, at Microsoft, weve decided to take a different approach.Weve decided to make the entire Web available to our customers, because thats what they asked us to do.

So built into Pocket PC is Pocket Internet Explorer, which enables you to access the entire Web.

Now, there are a number of challenges, as I said, in bringing the Web to these devices.So one thing, when Web pages are authored, theyre authored for PCs, which have much wider screens and taller screens and so if you just put the same screen on your handheld device, you have to scroll around a lot, vertically and horizontally and in order to avoid that we put in some intelligent page-fitting technology into Pocket Internet Explorer.

So if we go to the view menu here and pick
“fit page”
were automatically going to fit this Web page, unmodified, onto our device.It will do things like shrink the white space along the sides.And now all of a sudden I dont have to scroll horizontally anymore; I can have this Web page authored for a full device on my screen.And, of course, it still works like any other Web page.So I click on it, Ill click on the links — it will take me to another Web page and you can see that again that fits just on one screen there.

And, again, so thats some intelligent technology weve built into Pocket Internet Explorer.

Now, another thing that we think is important with a handheld device is to be able to look at your data, whether youre online or your offline, because youre not always going to be connected.Connectivity is good, but you cant always be connected.Just last week, in fact, I was in the subway.I was riding — I was taking the 2 up from the World Trade Center to 72nd Street.This is really true; Im not making this up for the presentation.And I was kind of stuck in the subway.And I pulled out the Pocket PC and I had actually synchronized it that morning, so I had all these Internet pages on there and I was able to spend my time on the subway and read different things that I had downloaded on the Internet.

And its actually really easy to get Web sites and Web pages onto your device, because as youre browsing the Web in IE5, we have a button there called a mobile favorite.And so if you just click on that button on a Web site that you want to see in your device, the next time you synchronize the device it will automatically download that Web site onto your device.And so its really, really easy to look at content both online and offline on your device.

Now, some people have decided to author content specifically for handheld devices, for these small-screen form factors, and we thought wed show you some of that as well.Here we have something that Expedia.com is working on and which they plan to roll out in the next few months.So here Im on page from Expedia.com.You can see a travel itinerary from New York to Chicago to Los Angeles.Now, if we click on the New York part of my itinerary, you can see that it has my flight information, my hotel information and my rental car information.And if I want to know more, if I want to click on my rental car information, youll see information about what kind of rental car I have, what it costs, where to pick it up, my confirmation codes.So all of this will be automatically sent to my device from Expedia.

We even have the weather information, which has been sent to us by Expedia, telling us what the weather is going to be like in New York — and all this stuff is pretty helpful to be carrying around with you in your handheld device, again looking at regular Web pages here with color and with graphics.And Expedia expects to make this available later on this year.

Now, a lot of these things are very exciting to do when your device is offline, but, of course, things get a lot more exciting when youre online, when youre directly connected to the Web, to the Internet, and we have a lot of ways where you can do that.

We have network cards where you can direct, where you can connect directly to an Ethernet from your device, wired net cards here.We also have modems so you can connect these modem compact flash cards, so you can connect directly via modem.We also have wireless networking cards, 802.11 wireless networking cards.And here we have a CDPD modem so I connect wirelessly over the cellular, over HPC cellular digital network.

And so we thought wed show you some solutions with these devices as well.

So here we have a Compaq iPaq device, which you saw in the video here, and what were going to do is slide onto this Compaq, the Compaq expansion jacket.And on this expansion jacket, we have a PC card, which is an 802.11 wireless networking card.

Now, if you can think of a situation where youre walking around and want to do some shopping, for example — I like shopping — and you might want to buy something.So in this case wed like to buy a DVD player.So, well go and Ill type in DVD player and search for it.And the thing is, you can have different kinds of DVD players.You can buy one for consumer use or you can buy one for computer hardware.Well, were going to buy one for consumer use here.And it will tell us there are a lot of different kinds of DVD players.

So the first one looks pretty good, so well go ahead and click on the first one here, the Panasonic DVD 1150 Portable DVD Player.And you can see that were going to the Web and downloading information on that.And you can see I not only have information — the name of the device — but we have a picture of the device as well.And it looks pretty good, and a description of it, and it will also tell me where I can go ahead and buy this device.So when I click
“Where to Buy”
its going to tell me all the different retailers around the country that sell this device, and it will also tell me how much they all cost. And so I can decide where the cheapest device is.

Now if I want to know where I can buy this nearby Ill go ahead and type in our zip code.Here at Grand Central Station were at 10022.Then well click
“go”
and well find that the nearest place where we can buy this device is actually 751 feet away.You can go to 950 Third Avenue at Electronic Publishing Services Incorporated and buy one of these DVD players.This is live.Were connected to the Web.Weve looked this stuff up. And now we can go ahead and buy our DVD player.And if we dont know how to get to Third Avenue, Shopping.com will even provide a map, which will tell us how to get to the Electronics store and buy this device.I thought it was pretty cool.

So once youre connected, you can not only connect to the Web; its pretty useful to connect to corporate e-mail as well.And, of course, you can do that with a wireless connection and Pocket PC as well.

In this Pocket PC we have one of these CDPD cards we saw.And what Im going to do is connect to my Exchange server, my e-mail server, which is sitting in Seattle 2,500 miles away, over AT & Ts digital cellular network.So here Im going to click the connect button here and hopefully well connect to our Exchange server 2,500 miles away.And you can see the e-mail messages starting to come in.And some of them have attachments and so were not going to read those, but well go ahead and read another one of the messages, and it will tell us if theres some more information I might want to look at inside my corporate intranet.So Ill click on that link and its going to load Pocket Internet Explorer.

And what Im doing here now is looking at a Web page inside my corporate intranet, behind my corporate firewall, 2,500 miles away, using a wireless connection.And what this is, is a solution built on top of SQL Server that helps us track inventory.So I can go ahead and track some inventory over our wireless network live 2,500 miles away, using the wireless capabilities of Pocket PC.Again, a live demonstration here.

So weve shown how you connect wirelessly with — you can see that both with wireless connections and wired connections.

And theres another interesting way if you want to go ahead and do that.Some people may not want to go ahead and buy the cellular modem or cellular network card.They may say they have a cellular phone already and they may want to use their cellular phone to connect.And you can do that as well.Pocket Communications provides this Compact Flash card, which you can plug into your Pocket PC, which will let you connect your own cellular phone to your Pocket PC and then you can use your Pocket PC again to connect wirelessly over your cellular phone through this little cable.

Now it would be a lot nicer if you didnt have to use a cable, and thats a problem for Bluetooth technology. Bluetooth, as many of you probably know, is a new standard, which will allow wireless communication over short ranges and eliminate the need to use cable.So what that means is that youll be able to have this cell phone in your briefcase or in your pocket and still use your Pocket PC to wirelessly connect to data.This technology is still in its infancy, but, of course, its going to be supported in Pocket PCs.And so we thought wed demo that for you today.

Now, because Bluetooth is still not quite there yet, a lot of demonstrations usually involve different Bluetooth hardware from the same company.So weve decided to be a little bit riskier today, and to our knowledge, this is the first time its ever been done in a live demonstration.

And here we have a Bluetooth card here, which is — Bluetooths Compact Flash card, available from Socket Communications, which we have plugged in to our Pocket PC.And we also have an Ericcson phone, which contains a Bluetooth clip-on.So what were going to try to do is have our Pocket PC find our Bluetooth phone over the air and then use that Bluetooth phone to connect to a wireless network.

So weve clicked
“connect”
and I guess it found our Ericcson phone for us automatically, I guess, while I was talking.And now were going to go ahead, and you can see well be able to connect to the Internet.This part isnt working yet; we just have a pretty graphic.But you can see that the Pocket PC went and found our Bluetooth phone using Bluetooth technology.And we think thats pretty neat.

So youve seen that weve come up with a number of interesting solutions, both offline and online, both wired and wireless, and that weve been working with a number of really key partners in order to make these solutions a reality.

And one of our really close partners, that Id like to introduce next, is TD Waterhouse — the second largest discount brokerage in the world, and we and TD Waterhouse have been working with each other very closely in order to create a really exciting wireless solution which will be available on Pocket PC.

So I would like to introduce Frank Petrilli, who is the president and COO of TD Waterhouse.

Frank?(Applause.)

FRANK J. PETRILLI: Thanks, Ben.And good morning.Its great to be here today, and were very excited to be a Microsoft Pocket PC launch partner.

The one thing we do know is that wireless is going to drive the next explosive growth wave in our industry.Weve just seen an amazing explosive growth with online investing over the last three or four years.We think wireless is going to bring us 50 to 60 percent of our business in the next three to five years.

Investors want to do it all, any time, any where, and its our job to give them an easy and convenient way to access their investments and to manage their financial affairs whenever and however they choose, and the Pocket PC platform allows us to do this.

Using the Pocket PC platform, we are developing wireless applications that will take our existing webBroker functionality and it will convert to the Pocket PC.Therefore, our customers will be able to not be land-locked to their computers at home or in the office.And today, webBroker accounts for 82 percent of our business in the U.S., and on peak days, were doing over a quarter of a million trades a day.Can you imagine when customer can be carrying around a handheld device like the Pocket PC and execute their trades whenever and however they want?So were very excited about this.

Lets take a look now at how a typical customer will use it.Were already logged in here.And the important point is that the user ID and the password is exactly the same as the customer would use on the desktop, and so it makes it easy to access.And then weve got the fact that the familiar webBroker interface that the customer is comfortable with is there.And thats made possible by the Pocket Internet Explorer browser.

Also, as far as security, there is nothing more important than security in the financial services industry; protection of customer information is paramount.So the Pocket Internet Explorers built-in SSL encryption is important to us and will protect our customers.

So lets move on now to the demo — quick demo.

Most likely, customers will check out the market.Lets take a look at — this is a shot of yesterdays wonderful day.We loved it.After last week, we were hoping for a few more days like this.

And then lets move on to movers; lets take a look at who the movers were of the day.You have the actives and the winners and losers.And there we see Microsoft, a very active stock.Lets check on a quote there — 80-11/16.Not so bad.

Lets check news now.On webBroker Wireless for Pocket PC, we are not only going to give headline news, but we are also going to give full news stories from sources like Dow Jones, PR Newswire, Bridge News.

And more likely, our customers would then want to place an order, to buy or sell.Going to the trading page — again, the same look and feel of what a customer experiences today.But now its with them any place, at any time they want it.

So lets place an order for a hundred shares to buy at the market, and we all know you should not put in a market order in these volatile times, use limit orders.And — (laughs) — in any event, lets preview the order page, and there you have it.

So again, the sense I am trying to give you is that the look and feel, the functionality — this is so exciting for us.So we at TD Waterhouse are dedicated to providing the best wireless experience to our customers.

And we believe consistency is an important part of that experience, so again the message is: our customers already know how to use our service with the same user ID and the same password.

To kick off the launch of this Pocket PC, what we are going to do — and we are announcing today — is that we are going to offer free Compaq iPaqs to 5,000 selected customers.And we are going to market the Pocket PC to our entire base, which is 3.5 million accounts strong.

So we plan on distributing these devices when we officially launch our product in the third quarter, and we are very excited about it.So once again, we are delighted to be a Microsoft Pocket PC launch partner.But what I am more excited about is I know that our customers are going to love this service.

Thank you.(Applause.)

MR. BALLMER: Well, I am glad we didnt place a market order then, today.I think you get a sense of how richly integrated we have made these devices to the Web, through wireless connections.

I talked about expandability.And certainly, the TD Waterhouse application is a good example of the kind of software expandability you get from the fact that we have an open platform with a rich set of development tools.

But you may want to actually do your own customs applications for these kinds of environments; applications that help run the business of your business as an enterprise.We think there are three key constituencies for anything that you try to drop into an enterprise: number one is the actual users.And the users have to have an application experience that is familiar to them, and they have got to get access to the information they want.

For the IT community, you want a management and security infrastructure that is consistent with other things that go on in the enterprise.If there is a way the enterprise has of managing who has access to what data, you want that same approach to apply to people who try to access the data from these hand-held wireless devices.

And perhaps most importantly for developers, you want a familiar set of tools — the Microsoft Digital Studio Tool Set is an example — and a familiar set of programming APIs and services like the Windows APIs and Services.Thats part of the original palm-size PC vision we had right.That part of the vision is only better in this new Pocket PC form factor.

And to show you a little bit what you can do for enterprise application development in this environment and talk to you some about their plans, Id like to invite on stage with me now Peter Zencke, who is an executive board member at SAP AG.Peter is going to have a chance to talk to you a little bit about some of the exciting enterprise application work that SAP is doing, particularly in the context of mySAP.com.Welcome, Peter.

(Applause.)

MR. ZENCKE: Hello.Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.mySAP.com — the name means SAP is todays Internet enterprise and inter-enterprise solution on one hand side.On the other hand, this is a program where
“SAP”
stands for business and industry experience and where
“my”
stands for people empowerment and personalization.So the basic vision we have is that of linking people to business in the Internet age.

We feel that this vision is very close to how Microsoft thinks, and therefore, we now can expand that vision to reach the mobile workplace.The workplace, actually, is the reality of SAPs and mySAP.com strategy. It is a personalized workplace.It is a workplace which offers for one individual exactly the business information, the business transactions he needs in his day-to-day work; could be professional transactions, could be occasional transactions, could be actual transaction information coming out of different systems, including the Internet.

Now, theres no longer just the desktop in the office.In the time of mobile computing, people are accessing the same or a subset of these functions, available anywhere at any time, access productivity, and this is the mobile workplace on the Pocket PC.

So mySAP.com goes mobile.SAP makes mySAP.com applications available on the Pocket PC, based on Microsoft and SAPs joint development in tools linking the business APIs of SAP into new applications running on the Pocket PC.

The new interface-specific mobile business solutions we are offering are not just canned solutions; they are adaptable, they are extendable, to fill the individual customer needs.Theres a big opportunity for our partners, for solution partners, for the Microsoft network, for corporate developers to create their own custom mySAP.com applications.

We are very proud today to have an enterprise customer ready to deploy at day one.This is Husky Oil, one of Canadas best and biggest oil and gas producers, and they are using the Pocket PC for material handling and warehousing.It is a wireless application.It is an application, which hits directly into the SP transactional systems, but it has a very specific look and feel for the needs of people working a warehouse.

So, done.Im handing over.

MR. BALLMER: Thank you, Peter.

It is rare that you get a chance, at the time that youre launching a new product, to have an enterprise customer that is prepared to launch a production application.This is the application that the Husky Oil employees that work in their warehouses across Canada are going to be using to track their inventory that is being sent from the warehouses.When they look in at the beginning of a day, they have an application that gives them a choice to handle different things.Here were going to basically take an order and fulfill it.And theyd have an order sheet.This order sheet has a bar code on it, and so they just use the bar code reader on that to be able to capture the order that theyre trying to fill.

Then I have here a product, and what well do now is — you can see on the screen the window.Were going to switch now to the server, where youre see both a mirror image of this screen, but youll also see the backend server process thats tracking on the right the different orders that are being processed.And we are talking over the 11-mega-bit wireless LAN that Symbol provides in conjunction with their devices.And so I have the material that were going to ship out.I use the device to capture the bar code thats on that material.I then can use glove 10 or very big fingers to be able to select the number of inventory, the number of quantity that Im sending out.I hit
“enter,”
and you can see on the right weve sent a quantity of seven now of this inventory.

This application is amazing.It was developed using the Vardarostechnology from Abaco , and it was developed by a solution provider, Finntech.Whats amazing about it is that this application was developed — designed and developed and ready to go out into production in one week.

Peter, back to you.

MR. ZENCKE: I think, for me, very interesting is how Pocket PC can be just expanded with add-ons, lock-in devices — in this case, to read out bar codes or whatever kind of information handling.This is just one example.It is an example which posts us back into the SAP system, but has a very special look and feel for the people working — in this case, in a warehouse.There will be hundreds of scenarios for different people.All these scenarios will be specific; will have a specific look and feel.It is no longer just one standard system; it is an adaptable system for people, to empower people at their day-to-day work.

So I thank Microsoft and SAP and the many partners.We do have an exciting time to bring business to the people and therefore adding value to customers.Thank you.(Applause.)

MR. BALLMER: I hope you get something of a sense of the enterprise readiness of the Pocket PC, and maybe a little bit more of a keen eye toward what the opportunity might be in the enterprise arena.

To talk a little bit more about that, I want to invite up on stage with me Tom Razmilovic, whos the president and CEO of Symbol Technologies.Symbol, as I said earlier, is one of our hardware partners, but Symbol has a broad range of expertise in doing hand-held, ruggedized, infrared, bar code-oriented devices for a variety of vertical markets, for retail, for warehousing, et cetera.And certainly I think Toms in a very excellent position to talk about some of the kind of vertical enterprise applications that together we might target with the new Pocket PC design.So let me turn things over to Tom.(Applause.)

TOM RAZMILOVIC :Thank you.Thank you, Steve.

Im very pleased be here, and Symbol is very proud to be a part of the Microsoft vision and achievement with the Pocket PC.What better place to be for this important event than here at the Grand Central Station — such a vibrant place, in one of the most vibrant cities in the world.

So let me tell you in just 60 seconds who Symbol is and what we stand for: quoted in the New York Stock Exchange in revenues of 1.2 billion last year; 50 percent, United States; 50 percent, international, around the world; and 28 consecutive quarters for meeting or exceeding Wall Street EPS.Conservative estimates we are the world leader in a hand-held computing, bar code-scanning, and wireless local-area networks.

We have installed over 10 million hand-held computers and scanners in over 50,000 wireless local-area network sites around the world.The universe of wireless mobility is our base.We are the only company in the world to have a core competency in hand-held computing, automatic data capture, and wireless LANs under one single roof.

The unique combination of all three core competencies created a world-leading technological foundation for expansion on a broader basis in the wireless local-area networks, wide-area networks, and mobile computing become an integrated step of the system offerings.

Early activities in a mobile computing advance also created an outstanding base for the mobile Internet, e-commerce. Or, as we prefer to call it m-commerce, mobile commerce, which Symbol is now starting to harvest.

On March 14th this year at the White House, President Clinton awarded Symbol the National Medal of Technology, the countrys highest technology honor.We were the only company to win this prestigious award in 1999, and only the 11th corporate recipient in its 20-year history.Previous winners included Bell Labs, Mac, 3M, Corning, Dupont, and others.

We are very excited about our partnership with the Microsoft team.Dramatic changes are now taking place in demand equation, what is being called the PC Plus era.

Already in the year 2001, hand-held units or information appliances are overtaking the number of PCs to be sold by approximately 20 percent, or 15 million PC units would be sold against 18 million information appliances.Yes, after 2001, the gap will only increase in the favor of information appliances.

Mobility and the convergence of the voice and data are the key facilitators of change.There aremany untapped opportunities in this PC-Plus era, higher than ever in the old world of sitting at office or home with your PC.We are now at the ultimate object of computing, and that is human, its us.Humans are mobile, want to be mobile, and with a Wireless Universe we can provide whatever is needed to the world.

Symbols PPT 2700 is a highly rugged Pocket PC, the Windows-powered solution for todays and tomorrows mobile work force.Pocket PC is the key enabler in this mega, mega opportunity.This is, yes, an unmatched product for the most challenging environment, thanks to the power of PC, which brings the power of PC in your pocket, the Pocket PC power, the Pocket power tools, desk-top equivalent now in your pocket, and its fitting the enterprise in your pocket.

I can only congratulate Steve and Ben and Microsoft on their achievements, and I can see pockets full of — guess what?But look at the key list of our key customers achievements which includes Pocket PCs:Department of Defense at the AITs government contract, $250 million awarded to Symbol over the next five years, the next generation of UPS terminals.The next generation, over 80 information appliances, start with our hotels with our application partner, and so on.

But the Microsoft team listened and learned from our customer demands.Pocket PC is a breakthrough in any point of view and by any comparison on the market.Microsoft and Symbol have made Pocket PC a part of their future strategy for the mobile applications.And the numbers speak for themselves — customers, ISVs, wireless, online community, e-commerce and the m-commerce — the whole world loves it.

Thanks to Symbol and Microsoft Pocket PC, ladies and gentlemen, in a very short time, you will have the same form factor of this product as we have seen on the screen, which is your PDA, your cellular phone, your access to wireless local area networks, with the enterprises and/or public places, wide area networks with instant access to the Internet, and make you informed of the day by scanning the object from the same device, this device, even sending or receiving e-mail or video via the Internet.

Thank you again, Steve, Ben.Thank you, Michael Sortin.(Applause.)Thank you.

MR. BALLMER: So Ben wonders what Im doing here.I didnt tell you about this.I just thought it was important for me to highlight when we got to the one fun slide, the one slide where we talked about entertainment value and personal value, Ben decided that he looks more like a fun guy than me today, so I guess I have to go sit down.Is that right?

BEN WALDMAN: Well, actually, do you want to —

MR. BALLMER: (Laughing)No, no.You drive.

MR. WALDMAN: Hes my boss; I do what he says.

So its been really great working with so many partners, with SAP. SAP came and told us that they wanted to do these things, to deliver these solutions to customers and they could only do that on the Pocket PC, which is why they chose to do — to make it exclusively available on Pocket PC.

On these Symbol devices, theyre great.We told you they were ruggedized.What that means, basically, is I can turn one of these devices on, of course, and then I can drop it on the floor, and as I turn it on, its still working.Here — if you want to hold it up under your screen here, you can see that its actually switched to — we switched the on mode here, you can see that its actually still working, even though I dropped it on the floor, pretty hard floor, too — some great products from Symbol.

So a lot of people ask us with Pocket PC whether we — are we creating a product for business people or are we creating a product for consumers?And, well, theyre the same person.People leave their jobs at some point during the day and they want to go and do other things, people want to have a life.And they told us they dont want to have two different kinds of devices, so a lot of people wanted one device, which was useful to them at work and at home.They asked us to create a device like that, and so that, again, was one of our goals with Pocket PC.

And when theyre outside of work, people like to do all sorts of things.Some people like to spend a lot of time doing private e-mails, so well support AOL, the entire AOL client here on Pocket PC.AOL is then a client of Pocket PC.And you can see that we can go ahead and look at our AOL online mailbox here and look at our AOL mail.And of course we will support Hotmail as well.

Now, a lot of other people like to read books.And so far, reading hasnt been the greatest experience of reading on screen, because LCD screens dont have the same resolution as paper, so reading isnt really all that great.So about a year ago, Microsoft announced our ClearType technology, which triples the resolution of text on a screen and makes reading on a screen a lot more pleasant than its ever been before.Weve announced ClearType, weve been talking about it a lot, weve demoed it a lot.Well, today were finally shipping it.ClearType technology ships inside the Microsoft Reader on Pocket PC, the first time that ClearType is shipping from Microsoft.

And so here we have the Microsoft Reader up on the screen, the different number of electronic books in our library, so we can go ahead and take a look at one.Lets go ahead and take a look at
“Peter Pan.”
So we can look at this book on the screen, and the text looks amazingly sharp, even when its blown up on the screen here.And if you want to come and look at some of these devices afterwards in our Partner Showcase, you can see the text is far more readable on the screen than probably any LCD screen youve ever looked at in your life.

And the nice thing about reading this thing online is that you can do a lot of other things.For example, if you have a word, and you dont know what it means, a word like
“lovely,”
for example, you can look it up on the Encarta English Dictionary, and well define this very difficult word
“lovely”
for you.And we can even go back and look at other different kinds of books as well, because we not only support printed books, weve incorporated Audible.coms audio player into this device as well, so you can hear spoken books, spoken magazines, and even radio shows.And here we have Robin Williams radio show that he does each week.

We also have an important announcement to make today.Were announcing today that Slate magazine, Microsofts political journal, edited by Michael Kinsley, will be available each and every week in Microsoft Reader eBook format.You can just go to Slates Web site and download Slate in eBook format, and read it on your Pocket PC.And for that, we have Michael Kinsley to thank.And I know Michaels here in the audience.And so if Michaels here, I just want to thank — have him stand up and thank him as well.

Oh, there he is, down here, where’re the lights — can people see?Thank you.Thank you, Michael.

So people are able to do e-mail, able to read books.

A lot of people like to listen to music.MP3 players have been selling like hot cakes.And so in Pocket PC, we include built-in — it comes with a product, the Windows Media Player, which allows you to play both MP3 files as well as Windows Media secure digital music files.

So if we look at a Pocket PC, we just hit the
“play”
button, and we can go ahead and hear some music.(Plays music.)And it actually sounds pretty good.In fact, this is the music, which was being played when you came into the room here.

Now you might wonder,
“How do you I get my music inside, into my Pocket PC?”
Well, one thing you could do is use the synchronization software we provide with Pocket PC, but we have much a cooler way to do that as well, because MP3 is kind of cool, and Windows needed a kind of cool — and we just wanted make a cooler way to do that as well.

With Windows Media Player, Version 7, which well bring up on the screen right now, youll not only be able to listen to music, be able to download music from MP3.com or WindowsMedia.com, youll also be able to rip your own CDs.And if we can bring it up on the screen right now, be able to see the Windows Media Player, and you can see that we can listen to music here as well as — and while doing that, have it actually look kind of cool and fun — well, some gratuitous graphics there.I think its pretty fun.

So — but we also have a button here with this portable device, and if you click on that, wed see that weve made it — built in the ability into the Windows Media Player to take any of the music youve ripped or downloaded and bring it directly to your Pocket PC.And so with this simple interface, it can bring music onto your Pocket PC.And we have our MP3 player built directly into the Pocket PC.You dont have to carry around two devices, just have one.So music, books, e-mail.

Probably the thing that most people like to do, maybe, is play games.And playing games and having some really good games requires some really powerful devices.So of course, weve built in Solitaire into the device.Every device has to have Solitaire.

But we thought we could do a lot better.So we have been working with a company called Raptor Technologies to develop some really interesting games, as well.So naturally, we want to show you a game called Fire Drill.And the idea here is that you put out fires in the office.And the nice thing about this game is that you can see that we are actually smoothly scrolling around the screen.So we have some really amazing graphics here only available on the Pocket PC.And those are things that we can do because of the power inside the Pocket PC.Simple and yet powerful.

Now there is one game, which we thought wed show, and I think well ask a trivia question.This year is the — the year 2000 — the 20th anniversary of one of the most popular arcade games in American history.Does anyone know what that is?Yes, Pac-Man.Okay.We showed it to you in a video earlier, ruined the surprise — but — but, I mean, its Pac-Man.And so we thought wed show you Pac-Man, as well.

This is actually the original Pac-Man arcade game, the code which ran on the arcade machine.And we are actually running it here through an emulator.You see, if we run this, its exactly whats running on the arcade game.Well run a game here. Touch the start button.

We will play Pac-Man.Brian wasnt very good at Pac-Man 20 years ago, he told me, and it looks like he hasnt gotten any better.

We really like Pac-Man.We wanted everyone to be able to play Pac-Man on their Pocket PC.So we are going to give it away for free, so everyone who buys a Pocket PC this year will not only get Pac-Man available for free, but we are going to be giving people this — what we call our Pocket PC Fun Pack, and which contains Pac-Man, a host of other games and a host of electronic books.So anyone who buys the Pocket PC this year will be able to go up to our Web site, PocketPC.com, and order one of these and get these available for free.

So today we have tried to show you how Pocket PC can be a great companion to Outlook, a great tool in the office, has great wireless capabilities; and also a device, which can be fun outside of work, as well.And after that, I am just going to go ahead and introduce — bring back Steve to tell you some more.(Applause.)

MR. BALLMER: I feel a little bit, honestly, like when we did the launch of the original Windows 1.0.Theres just so much, and I remember doing videotape where I said, you know,
“Weve got this and that and this and that and this and that and this and that and even more!Weve got Reversi!”
Well, Bens got Pac-Man.

I am very excited about what weve had a chance to show you, but I think as important is the enthusiasm that weve seen in the industry behind our Pocket PC work.We have four hardware partners.I dont think our goal in any sense is to have thousands and thousands of manufacturers of these devices.Weve got four solid partners building the actual devices.There may be more over time, but the key is to really focus in on the hardware and software add-ons.

We have over 350 launch partners around the world, solution providers, software developers, hardware add-on providers.Theyll provide over 1,000 applications and, of course, you have full access to the world of the Web and the world of music, and here is just a sample of some of the people who have software available for Pocket PC or hardware available for Pocket PCs on launch.

Weve talked about it a few times, but Im going to really emphasize it with a full exclamation bullet point: wireless is the key to the future of these devices.Weve put a lot of focus in on the infrastructure for wireless and with our hardware partners on wireless solutions, the Windows capabilities with Internet access, full content availability, special content optimization; but also, a set of activities that were doing outside of the device state with members of the wireless industry on wireless infrastructure, mail, events infrastructure, instant messaging infrastructure, and, of course, our own MSN’s back-end services.So the partnerships that we put in place not only to build these devices but to drive wireless operators to support this kind of computing, I think, is very important.

There are a number of announcements that were implicit in what we talked about today are being made explicit, new cool hardware devices from a variety of vendors, our first wireless solutions, the fun Pac-Man Fun Pack.I was a big Pac-Man player, by the way, in 1980 when it came out.We have a set of customers who already are in the process of starting the deployment of these Pocket PCs, the kind of work were doing with SAP and TD Waterhouse, and just a variety of things that are already well under way.

Weve tried in this space before.People have highlighted that to me.I think weve got the right formula: a superb end-user design, great developer flexibility, great third-part add-ons, designed to be flexible to accommodate people that work individually, personally, as part of the enterprise.Its the right device.Its at the right time.And as we say at Microsoft,
“Where do you want to go today?”
you can go to any of these stores here in Manhattan, buy the device, available today, and we hope you enjoy the opportunity.We have a pavilion next door where a number of our partners are showing their software and their hardware.We encourage you to stop by.We encourage you to go get a device.

And well take probably 10, maybe 15 or 20 minute break so people can get a little bit of coffee, take a look at some of the things in the pavilion and then the management team for the Mobile Device division at Microsoft will be back here to take questions and answers from the press.

Thank you very much for your time.We certainly appreciate it.Thanks all.

(Applause.)

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