Emre Berkin

He was responding to a question from AME Info at an interview during the Gitex computer show suggesting that Microsoft may have become a middle-aged company that was living on its past glory.

'It is true that we have grown very big with revenues of $32-33 billion a year and employing 65,000 people worldwide,' he says. 'But we are still one of the most profitable companies in the world, and that is not a characteristic of a company that has run out of ideas.

'We spend $6 billion a year on research and development, and many of the technologies that you see in use today were developed by Microsoft. The PDA phone and tablet PC are two examples.

'For the future we are developing handwriting recognition and speech recognition. This technology will be with us in a year or two. And we are heavily committed to broadband as a means of implementing such products.

'This will mean that you can talk to a moving image on your computer and ask it to do things. You will really be able to engage with your computer in a completely different way. And it is not far away. It is what Microsoft is working on now.'

The Microsoft regional boss also highlights the importance of mobility in computing today, and the need to move beyond the redundant 3G mobile phone technology straight to 4G. This means wireless access to broadband Internet from a wide range of mobile devices, including the PDA, tablet and laptop PCs.

'As a company Microsoft is betting a lot on broadband,' he says. 'Broadband needs to be made widely available in order for many of the new products under development to work.

'But I think speech recognition is the next phase, provided it offers ease of use and a user-friendly interface. This is where the moving face on your screen comes in. You will be talking to your computer.'

For those in the IT industry who have always felt that Microsoft is living on another planet, then this commitment to the technology of Star Trek will come as no surprise. Microsoft wants to boldly go where no technology has gone before.