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Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: RTev who wrote (24046)	6/13/1999 8:47:00 AM
From: Jill	Respond to of 74651

Don't know if this was posted, Ballmer/Seattle Times: Ballmer: PC era still has some life by Jay Greene Seattle Times technology reporter Microsoft President Steve Ballmer gave an impassioned defense of the company's business model yesterday, answering growing criticism that the Internet will make the software giant obsolete. Microsoft's critics claim computer users will store more and more information on the Web so they can access it from devices such as cell phones, palm computers, even pagers. And increasingly, computer users are turning to the Web to handle such things as e-mail and scheduling. To Ballmer, the change is more opportunity than threat. "I accept the notion of new devices," Ballmer told a meeting of the Washington Software Alliance at Bell Harbor International Conference Center. "I just don't accept that the PC goes away." Ballmer sees a future with the personal computer at the center, running applications used by other computers, television sets, and other devices such as smart telephones and stand-alone Web browsers. "I think these devices will explode in adoption without replacing PCs," Ballmer said. Ballmer's point is one the company has gone to some lengths to make recently. Two weeks ago, Newsweek magazine ran an article by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates under the headline, "Why the PC will not die." Wearing his mantle of techno-visionary, Gates described a "PC-plus" era, where the personal computer will be at the center of a world filled with all sorts of computing devices. Ballmer hit on that point Wednesday in a speech at the PaineWebber Growth & Technology Conference in New York, saying the personal computer will keep a "central role" in a world where many devices connect to the Internet. His speech yesterday - Ballmer's fourth in five days - outlined that vision again. Microsoft routinely endures the criticism of competitors who accuse the company of clinging to an outmoded business. In an interview earlier this week, Oracle executive vice president Gary Bloom mocked Microsoft's PC-centered business as "distributed complexity." "This is a really difficult shift for Microsoft because they have so much to lose," Bloom said. To be sure, much of Microsoft business depends on Ballmer's vision becoming a reality. If the world shifts to Internet-centered computing, Microsoft's cash-cow operating-system and application businesses virtually evaporate. Scott McAdams, an analyst with McAdams Wright Ragen in Seattle, believes Ballmer is making the right bet. "These other devices grow at faster rates, but the synchronizing device will be the PC," McAdams said.