MS CEO Steve Ballmer on the iPad

[Music] the other night at this conference Steve Jobs was interviewed and he said that he thought I can't remember his time frame but was I don't know five to seven years or I couldn't be wrong about that but he's thought we were on a course let's say where fewer people would be using pcs and more people would be using tablets or smartphones or these other kinds of devices and I stopped them and I said when you say PC because sometimes that means Windows machines not including Mac's I said you were including Mac's or everything he said yeah personal computers that's what I mean and if if X number out of 25 people are using them today which is a very high number it's going to be a lower number and he said I don't know exactly when and I don't know exactly how many but this is what I believe what do you believe about that I think people are going to be using pcs in greater and greater number for many years to come I think pcs are going to continue to shift and form-factor PCs will look different next year year after year after that the underlying semiconductor infrastructure that Windows runs on you know the world's moving to systems on a chip that'll all keep changing so real question is what's a PC yeah I mean the truth of the matter is people want devices that do nothing people do on a PC today is going to get less relevant tomorrow number one number two there are things there are usage cases whether those are done today on PCs or on alternate devices that are going to grow in popularity there's no question about that it's particularly entertainment oriented scenarios it's not clear to me that I think there will exist a general-purpose device that does everything you want because I don't think the whole world is going to be able to afford five devices per person we in the bubble of Terranea perhaps that's the view the world and so you know I think I think there will be general-purpose devices they'll be specialty devices I think the PC is we know it will continue to more form factor I think productivity is going to be important I think consumption is going to be important and you know the real question is where do you push you know you know what was the quote I read something about trucks and you know yeah there may be a reason why they call math trucks but Windows machines are not gonna be trucks you know they're not they will continue to be the mass popularizer of a variety of things that people want to do with information with that said will there also be a device that you keep in your pocket because I think there is a fundamental difference between small enough to be in a pocket not small enough really to be in your pocket right and there will be some distinct differences in usage patterns between those two devices you'll see you see us already using technology across the two and what we're trying to do in Windows Phones in addition to bigger screen windows-based devices so I think you know the real question is what are you going to push so what if I think about your answer and and I this is semantics maybe but you're using the term PC I thought I just heard you use the term PC to kind of envelop things that I think a lot of average people don't think of as pcs they like like the iPad or to other tablets that are coming is that kind of a thing a PC sure so suppose of course it is it is course it is it's a different form factor of PC if you go to the average person say what is this it's a device on which I sort of processed the Internet I can type a guy try to take notes on one in a meeting with me yesterday that was fun meeting didn't didn't go real fast but but nonetheless what you know what is it so yeah I you know wouldn't surprise me to see competition try to sort of eliminate the role of what they've had that hasn't been popular in order to popularize the thing that's new and fashionable and that's a legitimate approach but there will be general-purpose devices in the world that let you participate in consumption and entertainment in interaction that let you participate with very large as well a smaller screen all of this in addition to whatever fits in your pocket which people will clearly think about is a different device

Channel: apfeltouchNET

Views: 879,284

Keywords: ms, apple, microsoft, steve, ballmer, ipad, windows, all, things, digital, walt, mossberg

Id: VWkRgNTJZuM

Length: 4min 54sec (294 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 04 2010