Ballmer Predicts $7.5B R&D Spending in 2007

Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer had initially announced a whooping $6.2 billion worth of investments for the 2007 fiscal year. The figure came in May and produced reverberations through the market. It illustrated Microsoft's promise of a commitment to step up the pace in its face-off with Google and Yahoo.

The Redmond Company's investment plans have changed since May, as Ballmer revealed this week in Madrid. Microsoft's research and development expenditures in FY 2007 have geared up and increased by $1.3 billion. Ballmer based his assumption more on estimates than on hard figures. "I estimate off the top of my head that approximately half a billion of that will be spent in Europe," he commented.

It is undoubtedly that, with Windows Vista and the Office Suite 2007 out of the way, Microsoft will concentrate its R&D into the Windows Live platform. Last week Ballmer stated that Microsoft's main priority - even at this stage when Vista is still in the making - is not the operating system, or the Office Suite, the Redmond Company's main revenue sources, but the Live initiative.