MICROSOFT
SEO SAYS MICROSOFT BUILD MORE DEVICES AFTER SURFACE
Microsoft
Corp's chief executive said his company would look at more opportunities to
build its own devices, after the launch of its Surface tablet last month,
potentially bringing the software giant into competition with its hardware
partners and opening the door to a Microsoft-branded phone."Do I
anticipate that partners of ours will build the lion's share of all Windows
devices over the next five years? The answer is, absolutely," Steve
Ballmer said at a tech industry event in Santa Clara, California, on Wednesday."With
that said, it is absolutely clear that there is an innovation opportunity on
the scene between hardware and software and that is a scene that must not go
unexploited at all by Microsoft," he said.With the Xbox game console and
now the Surface tablet - designed to take on Apple Inc's iPad - Ballmer has
been moving Microsoft toward being a "devices and services" company
that would develop its own hardware where it made sense.Reports surfaced two
weeks ago that Microsoft was already testing a design for its own phone, but
the company has not confirmed anything.Microsoft's new Surface tablet is the
company's first foray into building its own PCs and has raised questions in the
tech industry about how aggressively it plans to move into marketing more of
its own personal computing devices.Looking to Apple's success with its iPads
and iPhones, Microsoft believes tightly controlling the design of both hardware
and software can lead to superior consumer products.But building its own
tablets and "hybrid" PCs puts Microsoft into direct competition
against manufacturers like Hewlett-Packard (HPQ.N), Acer (2353.TW) and Lenovo
(0992.HK), who for years have been customers of Microsoft's Windows operating
system.
