Steve Ballmer: Partner Luncheon and Press Conference, Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Worldwide Availability

Remarks by Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation
Partner Luncheon and Press Conference, Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 Worldwide Availability
New York, N.Y.
January 29, 2007

STEVE BALLMER: Well, thanks. I want to welcome everybody, all of you, and certainly all of the key partners represented here today, who I think very much you’ll understand by the time we’re done today are really the key drivers and definers of the future of the technology industry broadly, and certainly the personal computer industry itself.

I guess I have to say it’s still the eve of the biggest launch in Microsoft’s history, although in New Zealand, in fact, we are in the day of the biggest launch in Microsoft’s history, which I’m excited about, and I think you might hear a little bit more about that today.

A couple of months ago we kicked off also here in New York the launch to business customers of Windows Vista and Office 2007, and we’ve really been feeling energy around that, but really as of midnight tonight here in the United States quite broadly anybody on any computer can buy an upgrade, can buy a new computer with Windows Vista installed, and I think that will be very, very exciting.

Since service pack 2 of Windows XP, which really focused in on some important security issues, we have really — the industry has come a long way. There’s been a lot of innovation, hardware, software, and really bringing that together in a way that’s very powerful and impactful for consumers is a big deal.

It’s been about 12 years since we last launched these products together. A lot has changed in those 12 years. I like to tell people, 12 years ago, when we launched Windows 95 and Office 95, the PC was really the only significant technology product in most consumers’ lives. The Internet was nascent, most people didn’t have cell phones, let alone Smartphones, MP3 players, DVR recorders; those were all things of the future.

Today, the PC is the center of the way most people manage and control their digital lifestyle, but the digital lifestyle now extends much more broadly, but the central role of the PC continues.

And we continue to move: broader reach, new connectivity, mobility, digital entertainment. All of those things have become important, and both Windows Vista and Office 2007 have been designed to really bring the best of those phenomena to market.

Our two products were built really with the help of our partners and our customers. We’ve had over 6 million people download beta versions of these products. And we focused in on really in an aggregate sense four areas. Number one is ease of use and excitement, whether it’s the new Arrow user interface in Windows, the new Ribbon, the way we’ve integrated search in Vista; there’s a lot on the ease of use and excitement front.

We focused on making these products safer, security, parental control, document inspection, anti-phishing, just to name a few.

If you take a look at what we’ve done with photos and movies and MovieMaker and Media Center, there is a lot here from an entertainment perspective, from games to music to movies, et cetera.

And last but certainly not least is this notion of helping people connect, connect up multiple computers, multiple smart devices, connect to feeds, RSS feeds off the Internet, to new Internet-based services. It’s been really quite a large batch of innovation for us.

As we move forward, I think the questions that I get asked now are, what’s going to happen, how much of this are you going to sell, what do your partners think of it, what’s going to really happen?

We think in the next three months we’ll probably sell five times as many copies of Windows Vista as we ever did Windows XP in the equivalent period of time — I’m sorry, Windows 95. We’ll probably go double what we did with Windows XP. And while some of that is the increase in the size of the installed base, a lot of that is the enthusiasm that we’ve had a chance to see and feel during this beta period.

We’ll have over 1.5 million devices that are supported at launch, 1.5 million devices, hardware, peripherals, networks, configuration. It’s really quite unprecedented, if you will. And there’s a range of new innovation that really harnesses that.

You’ll see new software built upon the new capabilities in [Windows] Vista. We’ll showcase some stuff today from North Face, new kiosk software that they’ve done that builds on the new presentation capabilities in [Windows] Vista.

The New York Times has built a new reader application to allow rich online reading of their newspaper.

With Fox Sports we’ve done a new Media Center application that gives you PC-based services around their sports experiences, and you can get live real time sports scores, personalized, customized, et cetera.

You’ll see beautiful new PCs, the TouchSmart PCs from Hewlett-Packard, the new Portege, particularly the R400 tablet from Toshiba, the Dell XPS M series for gaming and entertainment, and you’ll have a chance to hear about that from our partners here today.

We have over half a million companies that we’ll work with around the globe. You’ll hear today from the biggest of those partners. But the opportunity that we see to drive the technology industry, to drive PC sales, to drive new value from the consumer market to the business market is huge.

Here to kind of comment and help share a little bit in the celebration and talk about what Windows Vista means to them we have Kevin Rollins, CEO from Dell Computer; Sean Maloney, the executive vice president and general manager of Sales and Marketing from Intel Corporation; Hisatsugu Nonaka, head of the personal computer division, CEO of the Personal Computer Divisions and Network Divisions at Toshiba; Hector Ruiz, the CEO of AMD; and Todd Bradley, the executive vice president for the Personal Systems Group at Hewlett-Packard.

And I think what I’ll do now is sit down, so I’m not in front of our partners here today, but I’m too enthusiastic to sit there at the start, but I think what we’d like to do is have a chance to begin with Kevin Rollins, and let’s begin with you.

With Dell being a direct seller and you out there talking very directly to your customers, what do you think about Vista, what are you hearing, what do you think?

KEVIN ROLLINS (Dell Computer): Well, Steve, first, thanks for having Dell here today. This is an exciting launch, and I think everyone knows there’s been really a pent-up demand of energy building.

And just to give you a few steps, this weekend, as we started to take orders for Vista on our Web site, we saw a 20-percent increase in Web traffic. Essentially 100 percent of the orders in our consumer business included Vista now as what the customers are wanting, so you see that’s pretty exciting for them. And we’ve sold tens of thousands of copies this first weekend out of the chute.

And just on a personal note, I use the Dell XPS M1210, and I’ve had a version of that working at home, and I have a son who’s very much into computers. He saw my system, and he said, when are we going to have that on all of our systems in our home, I want that here tomorrow.

And so the exciting news is we’re shipping for delivery tomorrow real time, and it looks like there’s just the excitement we’ve all been anticipating is now finding its way into the marketplace. So we’re thrilled to be here.

STEVE BALLMER: That’s great. Well, thank you very much to Kevin, and thanks certainly for all the support we’ve seen from Dell.

Sean, what’s going on? Over to you. We’ve got to hear a little bit — you’re the biggest semiconductor company in the world. We’ve been partners for 30 years, something like that, a long time. We’ve gone through a lot of things together. We’ve got the unique convergence the way software and hardware works together. And now we’ve got this new generation of multi-core chipsets. How do you think all that fits together with the kinds of innovations we’re bringing to market with [Windows] Vista?

SEAN MALONEY (Intel): Well, first off, Steve, I think you’re really right to be enthusiastic about this, and I want to pass on my congratulations to those Microsoft engineers who have worked so hard to get this awesome technology out the door.

You know, I go back, as you do, to thoughts of early versions of Windows. I remember rushing to get Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3 back in the labs in Intel. And each of those products, as they came out, of course, have brought more and more people into the computer age.

I think today is particularly impactful, because not only do you have Windows Vista and Office 2007, but you’ve also got a surge of technology development in the microprocessor, the move to dual-core, and in our case Core2Duo, which happened in 2006. And then last week we announced a breakthrough, Gordon Moore calls it the biggest breakthrough in 40 years, of an entirely different way of constructing the transistor for 45 nanometers with high-k dialectrics. All of this means over the next two years, that, of course, more and more people are going to get fantastic technology.

And the PC has never been more important than it is now. If you look at the folks in this room, the things that they’re doing on computers that they didn’t do five years ago, and it’s truly global, all the way around the world. This is the Golden Age for the PC, and Windows Vista and Office 2007 are going to make an enormous difference.

STEVE BALLMER: Super, super.

Nonaka-san, pleasure to have you here, and certainly with Toshiba we’ve done a lot of some of the most pioneering work in the mobile form factors, and in tablets, et cetera, like the Portege R400, and I’d like to understand from you what you think Vista might mean for the mobile computing world.

HISATSUGU NONAKA (Toshiba): I am very happy to know that Japan is actually first country, one of the first countries for customers to enjoy Windows Vista. And in 1985, Toshiba started the mobile computer business. Since then, we’ve introduced many innovative notebook PCs, for example, the first laptop PC with hard-disk drive, and first ultra portable, and the first notebook PC with Wi-Fi, and with DVD, and now HD-DVD.

And it’s quite a challenging job to put many functions into small form factor, but Toshiba has many innovative technologies for miniaturization like other Japanese companies do very fortunately.

Recently, Toshiba changed our corporate message to leading innovation, and innovation not only refers to engineering but also refers to manufacturing, including procurement, quality control, and sales and marketing, so-called IQ activities in Toshiba Corporation.

We recognize that high-level software and hardware integration is required to develop the great products to meet today’s market needs. In 2004, Microsoft shared the same vision. Then we started core development work, and we spend almost two and a half years, and then the result is this, this machine, Vista Tablet PC Toshiba Portege R400. This one has innovative wireless capabilities using UWB, and Toshiba display for active notification, for e-mail and schedules while it’s off.

And Toshiba will continue to utilize Microsoft advanced software to make mobile computing more productive and more fun to use.

This R400 is mainly for business use, but Toshiba will introduce more innovative customer notebooks, consumer notebooks such as HD-DVD writeable version soon in Q1.

Toshiba has not only PC technologies but also TV and portable audio players and cell phones, even nuclear plants. And moreover, as future technologies, we have liquid fuel cell battery, and cell processor applications, and the new wireless antenna to support better digital lifestyle and digital work style.

Congratulations again, and Windows Vista and 2007 Office System enable us to offer the customer the latest and the best mobile computing experience. Thank you very much. Thank you.

STEVE BALLMER: Next we’ll hear from Hector Ruiz, who is the CEO of AMD. I’d really like to understand your investments in Vista, particularly with what you’re doing now in graphics and some of the excitement around AMD there. And I know we’ve worked together very closely on Windows Vista, and why don’t you give me a sense of what you think, and where things will go.

HECTOR RUIZ (AMD): Well, Steve, first of all, you know, as a little bit of a personal interest, Vista is a Spanish word, and it really is an awesome word that describes — you picked a fantastic name. First of all, congratulations, and thank you for inviting me. It’s frankly a phenomenal honor to be part of such an historic event.

And we think that the consumers and business users of technology alike are really ready for this change. They really have been looking forward to the evolution of this technology so that we’re now into this so-called visualization age of computing, and the future is just phenomenal. And so we’re really excited, congratulations on this phenomenal event, and being part of it is just awesome.

The second thing, we’re really honored to have been a part of the team that helps Microsoft on this. You know, AMD 64 technology was used in the development and implementation of Vista, and that’s really a tremendous honor. Every AMDer carries that badge with him, and feels real pride to have been a part of that, and being able to have been of help. So, our DNA is in it, and we’re excited, very excited.

As you mentioned, the acquisition of ATI has given us an opportunity to — quite perfect timing. We now have not only a tremendous capability in process and technology from a computing perspective, but also a process and powerhouse in graphics. And the combination of that now puts us in a position to help deliver the ultimate computing experience through Vista, which requires excellent hardware. So we think we’re really well positioned for that, and incredibly excited about the future. The stunning ultimate visual experience requires outstanding hardware, and we think we’re positioned to do that, and congratulations, fantastic.

STEVE BALLMER: Thanks a lot, really appreciate it.

Todd Bradley from Hewlett-Packard, HP delivers as broad a range certainly of consumer products and enterprise products as anybody in the marketplace that all take advantage of Vista and Office capabilities. What do you see as the advantages of Windows Vista and Office 2007 with the kinds of great innovations you guys are bringing across the board?

TODD BRADLEY (Hewlett-Packard): Well, Steve, first, thanks for the opportunity of letting us participate in the launch today, because like you, I think this is a momentous time and a momentous change.

And I will tell you that we delivered the first Windows Vista product in the world in New Zealand at midnight. (Applause.) So, thank you very much, thanks to our friends in New Zealand for helping make that happen, and, of course, the first of many.

You know, as we look at Windows Vista and Office 2007, we’ve spent an enormous amount of energy, over 150,000 man hours making sure that we provide products to the marketplace that really allow our customers to take advantage of this great new technology, the greatest chipsets from our friends at Intel and AMD, and now the Windows Vista platform that I think enables customers to better than ever get to those applications, get to that information that’s important to them.

I think what we’ve created with Vista is now the real life product that will enable you to easily access those pictures or those movies or that music that’s so important to you.

And, you know, you’ve seen us over the past year really talk about the fact that personal computing is very personal, and I think Windows Vista is the next awesome step in making that a reality.

And like Sean, look, I congratulate all the engineers, all the engineers at Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft and with all the guys sitting here on the platform, that have made this a reality, that are making computing more personal than ever. And I think Windows Vista is going to drive us through that.

So, again thanks for the opportunity. I hope your forecasts are right. (Laughter.) I think we’d all be thrilled, and we’re all going to put a lot of work behind making that happen.

STEVE BALLMER: Thanks, thanks very much.

NEIL CHARNEY: OK, we’re going to open it up now to Q&A. As I said, there are people with microphones, and if you would raise your hand, they’ll be able to come to you. Why don’t we start up here?

QUESTION: Steve, this Windows version took longer than you had hoped, and yet it doesn’t have all the versions that Microsoft once talked about. Recognizing that I know you’re never satisfied, are you satisfied at this point with the products that you’ve deliver to consumers starting tomorrow?

STEVE BALLMER: I think we have a tremendously exciting product, both for the end users and for the people who want to innovate around it, hardware companies, software companies. I mean, today is all about the end user, but the truth is the end user is not going to just appreciate [Windows] Vista; it’s [Windows] Vista on this machine, {Windows] Vista with this application. And I’m tremendously excited about what we’re delivering, and there’s plenty more where that came from.

The amount of innovation that I see stacked up, there’s new chip architectures coming, there are new hardware designs, there’s new form factors coming, there’s new presentation capabilities, there’s natural language technologies, there’s more improvements that can be made in user interface and new capabilities.

So, every release of Windows I hope I can say I’m as proud as I am today, and every release of Windows I suspect I’ll be able to tell you about how much more innovation is still to come from all of us in the industry.

QUESTION: Two questions, Steve. The first is, why three flavors of Vista for consumers instead of just one? And the second is, do you have already a date planned for the first service pack? (Laughter.)

STEVE BALLMER: The answer to the second question is no. The goal, of course, is not to need one, so the answer is no. Now, if we need one, we’ll do one.

On the first question, I’d say we got a lot of input, and I might ask some of the hardware vendors to also comment. I mean, the truth is there are a variety of different needs in the home. Some people work from home, some don’t, some people have a very kind of high-end, consumptive use style, some people are looking for things that are much lower end, and we were trying to kind of meet that range that, I don’t know, maybe Kevin, Todd, both of you would like to comment on that briefly.

KEVIN ROLLINS: Sure. Well, we also invested 100,000 hours of our engineers’ time to kind of get ready, but we also invested over 215,000 hours to have to be ready for our customers from a service and technical support and sales standpoint. This is a new operating system. It’s got tremendous features; customers are going to work into those. It’s got great opportunities. And I think because of the vast array, I consider this like a vast library, so many books, so many opportunities, you can go look into this, that some folks will want to look at the entire library, some people will want to select one book out of that library. And so with all of those capabilities within Vista now, it’s going to offer something different for every customer.

So, I think three versions is obviously appropriate, based on the customer need and usage model, and how they want to use their product. They will probably find after they buy maybe a lower version that they wished they had bought a more senior version because of the capabilities, and I think that’s what we’re all looking for.

TODD BRADLEY: And, look, I think the only thing I’d add to those two comments is this very much lines up with the way the industry segments our products, you know, from the entry level person who’s having a first computing experience, all the way up to the enthusiast that’s heavily into gaming, heavily into video editing, and I think three versions of Vista is really appropriate. It helps us execute that strategy, and gives us a clear path to take people up, a clear path for people as they experience the benefits and want more to get more. I think we’re very much focused on innovation that matters to customers, and I think Steve’s strategy, Microsoft’s strategy around three products helps us execute that.

QUESTION: I have a question for Mr. Nonaka. Is there any chance of having Vista running on Cell sometime in the future?

HISATSUGU NONAKA: That’s a very good question. Cell is a little different from Intel, AMD CPU, and we mainly use for the graphics applications. Right now we don’t have plans to use Cell for Windows Vista. In the future I don’t know, but right now the answer is no.

QUESTION: A question for the panel: Basically, what do you see the impact of Vista on average selling prices for PCs, because some of the hardware requirements and the premium versions for Vista that are available?

TODD BRADLEY: I’ll take the high fast one. Look, I think we are in a — the industry is obviously a very competitive industry. I think the fact that we see Vista as an opportunity to really focus on the enthusiast, and to drive some higher-end products, I think that will happen. At the same time, the value space is incredibly competitive. We’re all looking at how we profitability provide products at that entry level. So, I think you’ll continue to see improved value for money. I think Vista provides a great upgrade path to our installed base. I think over time we’ll see as people really begin to understand the benefits that Vista is going to bring to the consumer world, to the small business world, you’ll see that up-tick that Steve referred to in his opening comments. You know, prices are always hard to talk about, because we’re always focused on bringing best value to customers.

KEVIN ROLLINS: Yeah, I’ll just add we’re always wanting to have the customer experience be as good as it can possibly be. And Vista has such a rich kind of visual and digital capability that we will recommend to customers that they make sure their hardware is as richly configured as they can afford to tap into all of those rich multimedia, entertainment and security capabilities as they can. So, yes, that will probably need a little bit more hardware in most cases. Now, you don’t have to have that, but I think for a customer’s investment protection over a long period of time, and the PC is such a center of everyone’s home digital experience, customers will be wise to make sure their investment is well placed, and get enough hardware to run all the capabilities they have. And I think that will be a good thing for the industry by driving some more hardware capabilities.

STEVE BALLMER: The only thing I would add is I think consumers are very keen to buy things that they see value in, and they’re not — it’s not all about price points. When I was in Japan with Nonaka-san, we talked a lot about differentiated PCs with value, particularly in the Japanese market where in some senses the consumers are early adopters. Certainly what we all I think see today is a shift to notebooks from desktops, since notebooks are inevitably more expensive than the equivalent desktop model. So, I think it’s all about capability the consumer wants at the best price as opposed to some absolute focus on price.

PARTICIPANT: I agree.

QUESTION: A couple questions about entertainment, which was just mentioned: Steve, from a very specific perspective for Microsoft, how does this play into the connected entertainment strategy that you all have been talking about? And then also for HP and Dell, what does this mean in terms of capabilities for entertainment and for DRM, and actually Intel as well?

STEVE BALLMER: I mean, if you take a look at what the sort of home of the future is going to look like from an entertainment perspective, the PC will be probably in most homes the smartest device. It will have the most storage. You’ll be most tempted to want to sort and tune and organize with the capability of the PC, but you’ll want to have access maybe across multiple PCs, you’re going to want to have access to the same content at the various televisions, which is why we introduced the concept we call the Media Center Extender where you can put a lower price device next to the PC and feed from the Media Center PC that might be in the den or someplace else. Eventually people are going to want to see the mobile devices fit in as perhaps phones but also perhaps other kinds of control devices for things that go on in the home. We’ve talked about a lot about where we see the role of Xbox in kind of dedicated videogame consoles.

Over time, we announced at CES that we’re bringing this new IPTV client that we’ve been working with AT&T and a number of other operators, we’re bringing it to Xbox. Some day we could anticipate even the PC being for people who want it to be the set-top box also that feeds content in from that source.

So, I think about [Windows] Vista as kind of the center and the launching point for the next generation of connected entertainment in the home.

TODD BRADLEY: Yeah, look, I’d agree with that completely. Clearly, the PC will continue to drive enormous amounts of content in the home. And at Hewlett-Packard we’ve spent an enormous amount of time, some of you may have seen some of the things we’ve done at CES where while the PC is driving enormous amounts of content, the ability to connect that content and view it on a television is what we think will be driving adoption of these applications. We’ve introduced a television called Media Smart that seamlessly will connect to any PC, and give the customer the access to that rich media that’s increasingly available. And we think rich media will drive that connectivity.

You also saw us introduce with Microsoft at CES a home server that we’ll put into the marketplace in September that will really for the first time allow seamless connectivity to huge amounts of personal data.

And so as we see these kind of puzzle pieces coming together, we believe the TV becomes the center, the PC continues to be critical from both an access, a connectivity, and a delivery mechanism to that rich content that’s available today.

SEAN MALONEY: Yeah, I’d just jump in there for a second. I think through the 1990s there was a lot of effort to try and get content off the TV world and put it onto the PC. More recently, there’s been a huge surge of traffic trying to go back the other way with Web 2.0 and so on. There’s so much stuff in the PC universe now, the reality is it’s sort of difficult for consumers to figure it all out.

And so one of the great things about Windows Vista is it’s going to make all of that just a heck of a lot easier, so I think that’s a real step forward.

KEVIN ROLLINS: Yeah, I think you mentioned about online, and how that’s going to tie into the entertainment field here. I think with about a billion users of the Internet, the next four years another billion, and where those users are going to come online with, they’re going to want the entire experience that those who are already online already have, and that’s going to include Internet connectivity, it’s going to include the entertainment suites. And so the next round of surge of users for PCs and for connectivity at large who will use this capability is going to come in more parts of the world that haven’t had it. Vista will allow them to not waste 20 years to be able to use the rich media; they can do it now. And they’ll want to do it online and bring that rich capability into their homes, into their offices, wherever they work, and this is really a step forward that will enable that online entertainment capability to occur within the home.

STEVE BALLMER: When you see a device like this that’s got an HD-DVD drive built-in, it just reminds you of how much content and how portable this stuff is.

QUESTION:: Kevin, you mentioned the S word, security. Steve, you were talking about the shift into notebook computing. I have a question for the panel in terms of how big a deal for customers is BitLocker, the security feature of full drive encryption for Vista.

STEVE BALLMER: Incredibly important. And now I’ll let somebody more objective comment. (Laughter.)

KEVIN ROLLINS: Well, security is an issue not only for the consumer, which is more what we’re talking about today, but BitLocker is really going to be much more applicable to the corporate user. And I think corporate security is something that every CIO and CFO and CEO are very, very worried about. And so adding that new feature and that new capability, in addition to the security features for home users, parental control, making sure that the right content is coming into the home to the right person, spam, spyware and spam capability, those are all features of security that I think Vista kind of up-levels, includes in the system, and is something that corporate users have been looking for, asking for, as well as home users.

TODD BRADLEY: I think the only thing I’d add to Kevin and Steve’s points are the world is becoming connected. We’re like past the point of being mobile. Now it’s about connectivity and how we connect be it a consumer, a small business, the CIO that has 100,000 HP laptops deployed. And security is just a huge, huge piece of enabling that connectivity. We’ve worked with Microsoft and built tools to help customers understand consumers — and this point is what we’re referring to — customers really understand the level of security they have, and in some ways with Advisor, one of the products we’ve built with Vista, now what are the threats in their network, is their network secure, and then provide them the opportunity to secure it. So, I think as we become more connected, security becomes just more and more important, be it for a consumer or a CIO.

QUESTION: My question is for Mr. Ballmer. With the evolution of Web products, is Vista going to be the last operating system?

STEVE BALLMER: I’d probably start by pointing back to my answer I think to the first question, which is there are so many areas in which we need innovation. Developers need a richer platform if we’re really going to get speech and voice and natural language, and more rich 3-D type graphics into the user interface. There will be evolutions; just the kind of stuff that’s going on in the semiconductor world alone, processors is the one that’s sort of, of greatest focus but if you look at what’s going on with storage, with HD-DVD, if you look at what’s going to go on in communications technologies, all of those things are going to evolve, and the operating system will need to evolve with it.

Now, the operating system, you know, some of the things are there, they come built-in, they’re there every day. Through technologies like our Windows Update service and our Windows Live service, we’re going to also have things that come down sort of real time, if you will. But the notion that a platform needs to exist that enables hardware, software, and user interface innovation, that’s a very long-lived notion. And frankly, as I said to Todd on the first question, we’ve got a very long list of stuff our engineers want to do, a very long list of stuff that all of the companies here want us to do. Try sitting through any one of these meetings, and sit down with a software developer, and you’ll understand just how much the technology and the platform need to continue to evolve.

TODD BRADLEY: Just one thing I would add to Steve’s comments on your question is the simplicity that Vista brings to customers, to consumers to access that critically important information is a huge step forward. And I think that will just continue to drive, be it the three products that we offer today, but that theme of simplicity and simple access is huge, and this is just a great step forward in executing on that.

QUESTION: This is for really anyone. How do you see the shipment ratio of pre-loads to boxed software going?

STEVE BALLMER: For Windows itself, for [Windows] Vista itself? I’ll take that. If you look historically, the bulk of people who get any new operating system wind up getting it with a new computer. We all think it’s great, even the guys who build hardware, I mean, these guys want to sell some chips, these guys want to sell some computers, but the fact that you can take machines that were bought recently and do a software upgrade helps in some senses create the momentum that says this is exciting, this is good. But the bulk of the units will wind up going out with new computers from HP, from Toshiba, from Dell, with chips in them from Intel, from AMD, from many other suppliers.

So, if we look out in the first 12 months, if it resembles any of our other cycles, by a factor of — by an order of magnitude we will have more units go out with new computers than we do with upgrades in the corporate world and/or in the consumer world. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to sell a lot of units, frankly, through the upgrade process. It just says people often take the time to say, now is it, now’s the time to go get a new computer that has richer capabilities, that has more built-in facilities, that is more mobile, that is a better entertainment device, it’s a better gaming device. So, overwhelmingly by units that will be where most people get Vista.

On the other hand, we have a lot of corporations who have recently bought new computers. We all worked really hard to try to avoid sales slowdowns in the business market and the consumer market. And letting those people have a good upgrade path, whether it’s through the tech guarantee program that our companies all kind of implemented together, or people going out and buying upgrades, that will also be important, but numerically, new hardware sales will be the lion’s share of the volume.

NEIL CHARNEY: Steve, I think that’s it for questions. Steve, if you want to wrap it up a little bit, and then I have some closing housekeeping.

STEVE BALLMER: Yeah, I want to just say thanks again particularly to our partners. The extra responsibility I think that all of us feel, we have an opportunity, we’re always trying to grow our businesses, but in some senses the technology revolution has a lot that it has and still needs to contribute to society. And the core advances that will propel that, whether it’s software or semiconductors or systems, companies sitting around the stage today have I think a special responsibility for, and the way we work together in partnership is super important. So, I want to thank Kevin, I want to thank Sean, I want to thank Nonaka-san, I want to thank Hector, and I want to thank Todd very, very much, not just for being here for today but for the incredible partnership that I think really best serves our customers around the world. So, thanks to all. (Applause.)

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