CES Impressions Steve Ballmer’s Keynote

To make a long story short: just jump into the VoD and start at minute 38 and you will get all the „gadget relevant” info you like in 10 minutes. The first two blocks were on X-Box and Windows Phone 7 and did not show too much new things. But if you like, you can for sure go for it at start from the beginning as I did. 

• The next Windows release will be brought to the ARM platform. First demos show smooth operation of 3 chipsets based on the ARM architecture. There were no announcement on when the new platform will be made available for developers but it will for sure boost up the developments of new non INTEL based mobile devices with more focus on PC-like features.
• Surface was shown on new improved HW allowing smaller form factors and direct scanning of your finger gestures using infrared, if I got that right. Just watch the demo.
• Kinect was a big part in the very first presentation ending up in avatar Kinect, a new reatime animated avatar feature that was announced to be launched X-Box Live customers this spring. Just got to the link below the VoD on the Microsoft page.

The keynote made it quite clear, that Microsoft is really eager on getting back on the bandwagon of all the new upcoming mobile devices, my it be netbooks or any kind of pads or midsize tablets. And if they deliver on their promises, there might be some good chance to at least get back some influence in the device scenario.