Microsoft: Windows 8 better for India, says Steve Ballmer

Microsoft is betting big on India. Its global CEO Steve Ballmer is gearing up for the release of Windows 8, and believes that India will play an important role in its growth, reports CNBC-TV18’s Kritika Saxena.

Ballmer says, “India is obviously an incredible bastion of software development.”
That’s why Ballmer, the brain behind all of Microsoft's big innovations, wants to increase Microsoft's India presence, especially before the big launch of Windows 8 later this year.
He adds, “Windows 8 is a huge event. We are really re-imaging Windows from the ground up. Windows 7 was a great product and was the best release of Windows that we ever did. And yet, we said after Windows 7, what really do we need to do next? We said we will start at the hardware layer and re-think it.
And it’s not just the product users Microsoft wants to win over.
Ballmer says that around 25-30% or more of all the software written in the world is written from people from India. “Living in India and living aboard, the talent base is rich and unbelievable and certainly galvanizing the developer community in India, here in Mumbai and elsewhere in the country to get excited to see the possibilities and re-imagine windows 8,” he adds.
And its not just Windows 8, Microsoft is also looking to expand across its product portfolios. In the services space for example, the company is looking at expanding in the IT infrastructure services, mobility and cloud computing areas.