From internal memo sent by Steve Ballmer to his employees:
With FY08 complete, I want to discuss my priorities for the year ahead and share my thoughts about the key strategic topics that are on everybody’s mind, including Windows, competition with Apple…
…In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience. Today, we’re changing the way we work with hardware vendors to ensure that we can provide complete experiences with absolutely no compromises. We’ll do the same with phones—providing choice as we work to create great end-to-end experiences.
What Ballmer is saying is pretty much what we all already knew; Developing on closed platform and controlling your software and hardware gives you obviously more control regarding the end product. How Microsoft is going to achieve similar end result in PC market, I’m not so sure. Closer development relations with hardware manufacturers to provide seamless compatibility?
But I sure am eager to see what comes out from Redmond.