While I’m rooting for my free six for menardconnect this year, Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer is having his top seven bets for 2009. The list includes:

• Windows. Definitely the core of MS and this is also my guess why he chose seven, since they are focusing on Windows 7.0 this 2009.

• Mobile. Touched Windows Mobile platform as well as Zune entertainment services (read: iPhone and iTunes turf)
• Desktop Productivity. Office and Sharepoint. This is Microsoft’s bestseller and profit maker (cash cow? 🙂 ) at the present.
• Server and Tools. Kinda vague for me but I guess this have something to do with the online hosted service offering. Will research further if they are also putting some things in the cloud.
• Enterprise Software. SQL Server and other middleware. (read: Oracle’s turf)
• Search and Advertising. Wow this is Google’s turf so I find it very interesting. He talks about plans of combined resource of MS and Yahoo to combat the Big G, but definitely no buyouts/acquisition. He mentioned that MS have 3 to 4 percent of the global search engine queries and they will not give up on this since there is no turning back if they give up.No concrete details other than not throwing the towel
• TV and Entertainment. Beyond Xbox. The key strategy he says is putting gaming and entertainment to the PC, phone and television.

Wow this is not like betting on Philippine Lotto. The stakes are higher here and this affects a lot of lives and companies out there.
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