The following is a partial transcript of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer from the company’s Financial Analyst Meeting on July 29. 2010:
Now, we’ve got some other competitive actions coming back, and we’ll talk about slates and tablets and blah, blah, blah, blah…
Today, kind of I’d say one of the top issues on my mind, let alone on your minds, one of the top issues on my mind, is, hey, there is a category that we’ve had Windows on for actually a long time. We’ve had Windows 7 on, tablets and slate machines now for a number of years, and Apple has done an interesting job of putting together a synthesis and putting a product out, and in which they’ve — they sold certainly more than I’d like them to sell, let me just be clear about that. We think about that. We think about that in competitive sense. And for us, then, the job is to say, Okay, we have a lot of IP, we have a lot of good software in this area, we’ve done a lot of work on ink and touch and everything else — we have got to make things happen. Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks, we’ve got to make things happen with Windows 7 on slates. And we are in the process of doing that as we speak. We’re working with our hardware partners, we’re tuning Windows 7 to new slate hardware designs that they’re bringing them to market. And, yeah, you’re going to get a lot of cacophony. There will be people who do things with other operating systems. But we’ve got the application base, we’ve got the user familiarity. We’ve got everything on our side if we do things really right.
We’ll get a boost sometime after the new year when Intel brings its new Oak Trail processor to market. Oak Trail is designed to be lower power. Lower power is good in a lot of ways. It leads to longer battery life, no fan, lower kind of noise levels, a lot of less weight — a lot of things that people like. And as focused as we are on this category, our partners are also focused in on delivering the systems and the chips that will enable kind of our architecture to continue and our software product to continue to move on.
So, we think about these devices and I don’t think there really is one size that fits all. I don’t think everybody wants a slate. I’ve been to too many meetings with journalists who’d spend the first 10 minutes of the meeting setting up their iPad to look like a laptop. Laptops actually are well designed for a lot of things. I notice they are all light. In fact, if you look around this room, they all weigh zero pounds, because they’re just sitting on the table, you are not holding them and you don’t set them up when you want to type, and they prop up — they have good attributes. But some people are going to want that form factor. Some people are going to want probably a screen that they take with them and maybe they throw it back into the keyboard. Some people are going to want a device that is screen and keyboard that spins around for inking purposes. Some people are going to want things very light or very cheap or very expensive or very powerful. All of those things are going to be important, and we’ve got a push right now — right now — with our hardware partners.
Some of you will say, well, when? When? And I say, As soon as they’re ready. They’ll be shipping as soon as they are ready. And it is job one urgency around here. Nobody is sleeping at the switch. And so we are working with those partners, not just to deliver something, but to deliver products that people really want to go buy.
There’s been, you know, a lot of action, some of which we talked about in the past that may or may not ship, new things that will ship. And then there will be things that will get updated and upgraded as Oak Trail comes to market. We do think the fact that we invested in touch, we’ve invested not only in touch, but we’ve invested in ink — I think ink is kind of a nice thing. I notice a number of people in this room are taking notes, some with a pen, some are typing. Notes are still a pretty good thing. Mark-up, annotation — we’ve got a huge investment in ink, in addition to touch. You will see us try to bring those things together over the course of the next months and beyond to really deliver the sort of slates and convertibles that I hope people will be very excited about.
Link to the full transcript (in .docx, no less), webcast (.wmv), and the obligatory PowerPoint presentation, here.
Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-Dewitt has also posted a partial transcript of Ballmer’s post-presentation Q&A:
…Are we going to see slate? Yes. What processor are they going to have? They are going to have an Intel architecture processor at least in any foreseeable future. Are they going to run Windows? Yeah. Will it be tuned? Yes! And we are going to sell like crazy. We are going to market like crazy. We have devices that will run more applications, that have as much content, that have anything you want on the planet. And we have an ecosystem of developers that know how to write applications for that thing. Believe me, as I think everybody knows, you can buy two PCs for the price of one iPad — two netbooks today for the price of one iPad. So, people are sitting there over-celebrating bomb costs and blah, blah, blah. We and Intel can get our job done and know how to make money. There’s good money for everybody in the ecosystem to go make. I talked about power. We’ve got work we have to do with hardware partners, with Intel. There’s certainly some work to be done there. And over time where we go is where we go. But at least in the timeframe that which anybody does these models, for example, let’s go. Let’s go and we’ll be in market as soon as we can with new devices, whether that’s, you know, really, really soon or just really pretty soon. I’m going to wait until I have the device that I want to hand you and tell you to go use, or a collection of devices. I think that would be the appropriate time to say it is time. But it ain’t a long time from now. Pardon my English…
On the netbook, nor the slate, if it’s two weeks one way or the other, or it’s a month, I mean, let’s not speculate, let’s merely say when you get your Windows 7 machine, it will print. Let’s just start with that. I mean some people actually like to print every now and then. Ours will print. I’m not trying to say that other guys aren’t doing good work. I’m not saying that. We’ve got to ‑‑ come on, every day. Every day you come to work you have to prove yourself, prove yourself, prove yourself. We’ll prove ourselves. …
I relish the competition. I relish holding up those couple of machines today that I wanted to hand you. It’s not today. I’ll relish doing it tomorrow. Bring on ‑‑ particularly if with the application base, with the tools that we have, with the user understanding and momentum and everything going on, we can’t compete with ‑‑ particularly whatever the weird collection of Android machines is going to look like, shame on us.
Apple is Apple. They’re always a little tougher to compete with. They’re a really good competitor, and tend to be a really high-priced competitor. People worried a little bit about our bottom costs. They’ve got a lot of margin in those devices, which creates a lot of room in which to operate. Okay. We’ve competed with Apple before. I talked about that.
We’ve been competing with Macs, and I notice in this audience you get one profile for the 93 percent of people almost who agree with us every day about laptops. We’re going to have things that should be interesting to them. That doesn’t mean it’s not going to be exciting. That doesn’t mean you’re not going to have to pay attention to shareholders. It certainly means we’ve got to pay attention. But, at the end of the day kind of what makes life kind of interesting, kind of fun, and you’re going to see very interesting things.
MacDailyNews Take: We must do everything possible to encourage Microsoft shareholders to keep this clueless, hopelessly overmatched man on the bridge of his rudderless, sinking ship for as long as possible. We have a good chance, since any MSFT shareholder who was not in a catatonic state would have demanded his head the day HP bought Palm for their OS. There is no greater vote of no confidence than HP jumping ship. That was the day Ballmer, if he wasn’t totally delusional, should have begun researching retirement villas. But the MSFT shareholders didn’t even seem to notice! Thankfully, we continue pray that Steve Ballmer remains Microsoft CEO for as long as it takes.
A video?! Sounds like a typical, albeit particularly weak, Microsoft vaporware dog and pony show meant to freeze a market in which Microsoft and their “partners” have repeatedly failed (or, more likely, a market that Microsoft et al. cannot even imagine) and that Apple will, with history as our guide, revolutionize (or create) and then utterly dominate as a slew of also-rans scramble to produce half-assed copies. Expect Microsoft’s presentation to be purposely vague (“Features can and will change before release,” Ballmer will mention), so that they can watch Apple’s tablet presentation and begin their process of copying poorly yet again. – MacDailyNews Take on the eve of Microsoft and HP’s “unveiling” of their “slate PC,” January 05, 2010
“It’s not a ‘booklet,’ it’s a ‘vaporlet.’ So, why is this ‘astounding’ CG imagery being emitted right now? Are Microsoft worried that a real device is coming soon from another company?” – MacDailyNews Take on the day “Courier” was supposedly “leaked” by Gizmodo, September 23, 2009
I smile every time this fool opens his mouth.
Nothing to see here shareholders, carry on as normal
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Wow! Monkey Boy’s trying to speak English. Someone
call professor Henry Higgins. Eliza Doolittle was easy.
This one’s gonna take a lot of work.
@daugav
I think we need Jane Goodall in this situation
“…Just like we had to make things happen on netbooks,…”
Which was to keep around WIn95, since Vista was too bloaty to run on them.
-hh
So much depends on their “hardware partners.” But this is a bad bargain for OEMs, competing viciously against one another for tiny margins while ms leadership collects fat profits licensing old software. Box makers will come up with something because that’s what they do, but they can never match Apple’s power of brilliant engineers and designers creating new, integrated user experiences.
I can’t believe Microsoft is actually WAITING for Intel to put out a processor. Dont’ they have any initiative?
I could only read the first half paragraph. A baby talks better.
What Balmer was trying to say was ‘We have been trying to sell Tablets using our poorly modified Windows software and have several time failed badly. We don’t understand why.
‘Apple come along and the first time has a smash hit with a custom built hardware and software design. We don’t understand why when Apple work hard to put together a integrated unit and we just throw something together, their stuff sells and ours doesn’t.
‘It really is beyond me’
“…hey, there is a category that we’ve had Windows on for actually a long time. We’ve had Windows 7 on, tablets and slate machines now for a number of years,”
I thought this was interesting, This reiterates that Windows 7 is just Vista (& XP) with lipstick, and that Ballmer thinks that this continuity is going to save Microsoft. The guy who drives the company not only has a thought process more erratic than a 14 year old on energy drinks, he is clinging to past victories to enter into new categories.
Like M.X.N.T.4.1. said, it’s not about tuning an existing desktop OS. I chuckle every time I hear someone talking about the need to just tweak Windows 7 to dominate the slate market.
Then I picture them kicking back on the sofa with their slates and getting tangled up in all the cords coming out of all those nifty ports they have while they burn their legs reaching for a Blu Ray disk. But that won’t last long because soon they’ll have to get up and get another battery.
MDN word is least, as in this is the least likely plan to work.
Good thing I’m getting a second gen iPad instead.
Ballmer puts the ca-ca in cacaphony.
BALLMER FOR CEO OF THE DECADE!!!!
oh wait…Jobs got already…
We are seeing The B Gates model of writting bloated un optimize code and hope a future processor will be abbe to run it at almost the same speed as the current processor/code. Is finally on its last legs…
Some one need to get the video or audio of this and mash it with the song from Chitti Chitta Bang Bang when the King commands Potts Father to make him a car.
In this case it Balmer wants a Pad/Tablet and asking the mfg to do it just like the King in that horrid movie!
“…Pardon my English…”
I’m sorry, was that English?!?!?
“We’ve had Windows 7 on, tablets and slate machines now for a number of years,”
Well, I suppose 1 is a number of years… if you’re Ballmy Boy.
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Jeezus, for a used car salesman type, he’s not even that good at spewing out drivel.
I”ll tell you, when it comes to Ballmer, his antics and his quotes/speeches, Saturday Night LIve couldn’t make this stuff up any better or funnier than the actual truth is.
LOVE THE PIC.
@ The Mac That Roared–
I sell cars for a living, and I take offense to a comparison to Ballmer.
The telling thing is that he is unfocused focus is all about competing and selling and marketing. What makes Apple unique is that their singular focus is to make insanely great products. All their other activities – production, sales, marketing – are the servants of their main focus, not the other way around. For MSFT, what the product is – is secondary.
The most amazing thing Steve Jobs has done was to bring Apple back to that singular focus that drove Apple from the very beginning, after they lost their way in the late Eighties and Nineties. This was no small feat.
MSFT has the same internal drivers they have always had – being derivative, reactive, and all about controlling markets, etc.
Apple’s model propels sustainable success – the world is getting an object lesson that the Industrial-era model that MSFT follows (copy/build it, then focus on monopolistic leverage plays) is not.
Im sorry but the only way Microsoft would get me to take one of their imaginary slates is if they gave it to me free of charge if not than I will stick with my beautiful iPad!
I love how he keeps repeating himself, repeating himself, repeating himself.
A Ballmerism.
Old saying — “It’s hard to build a reputation on what you are GOING to do.”
And MS is burdened by the reputation of what they HAVE done already. Not good for them.
And do you suppose Ballmer actually believes that 93% of computer buyers “chose” Windows? Like they sit down and think to themselves, “I have a choice in operating systems. Do I want Ubuntu? Mac OS X? Windows?” Then they CHOSE windows?
Is he ACTUALLY that delusional?
That might make a good poll… Does Ballmer actually believe that people “chose” windows? I’d love to know what the readership here thinks about that….
Ballmer’s boiled down, drooling drivel on Apple and Jobs:
Oh yeah? Well, just you wait! Just you wait! And your mudder wears army boots!
it’s fascinating such an obvious inarticulate blowhard can remain CEO of one of the world’s most important companies for so long. the huge profits from MS legacy products are the reason of course. plus a board of directors that must be a bunch of total pussies.
after the Windows Slate and WinPhone 7 and Kinnect all flop with mediocre sales next year while other competitors surge ahead, i would think there will finally be cry for “new leadership” at MS, and Ballmer will be out by the end of 2011.
i mean, this is really embarrassing.
That old thing about a roomful of monkeys typing for eternity, eventually producing the works of Shakespeare is not true. The laws of randomness predict they would never produce more than a half dozen coherent words in a row, to the end of time.
But they might produce these words of Ballmer. In fact I think they did.
“As soon as they’re ready”
No they shipped 8 years ago, long before they were ready. A 9-10 year head start and they’re still catching up.
Windows 95 almost in the ballpark of Mac 85.
Still, I’d like to see decent competition as always.
We are going to … blah, blah, blah.
Mr Ballmer, the horse has already bolted out of the stable door and you are still counting your eggs hoping that Intel vapourware will save your hinds. Keep on dreaming!
Didn’t Ballmer go to an Ivy league college? I’m surprised because his speech sounds non-Ivy league.
“we have got to make things happen” Good use of the Enmlighish there Ballmer