Steve Ballmer Delivers the Last Microsoft Keynote at CES

The 2012 International Consumer Electronics Show kicked off in Las Vegas yesterday, and Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer was there to keynote.

Starting next year, we will not be seeing Microsoft taking the stage at CES, which makes this year’s event a rather special one.

Steve Ballmer took the stage at the event to present some of Microsoft’s latest achievements, though he did that in a different manner than before.

This year, Ryan Seacrest was on stage with Ballmer, and he interviewed Microsoft’s CEO. He also hosted guests onstage for demos, and delivered a commentary during the event.

Steve Ballmer chose to discuss about Microsoft’s line-up of consumer products, including mobile phones, live TV, gaming, Bing voice search and more. Of course, all these were possible due to strong partnerships, the company notes.

Windows Phone was present at the show, and two new smartphones running under it have been showcased there, namely the Nokia Lumia 900 and the HTC Titan II. Both of them will become available for purchase on AT&T’s airwaves soon.

With over 50,000 application published in the Windows Phone Marketplace, the mobile operating system shows great traction among developers.

The Windows 7 client was also present at the event, loaded on new ultra-light, ultra-thin PCs. The platform was loaded on over half a billion computers to date. It is the fastest selling OS in the world, Microsoft underlines.

The Redmond-based company also announced the upcoming availability of Kinect for Windows hardware on February 1st, complemented by free developer tools.

Kinect was a great hit last year, with over 18 billion units sold. Microsoft also announced that Xbox 360 reached 66 million units sold worldwide, and that there were almost 40 million Xbox LIVE members.

Bing increased its share globally, while Office 2010 became the fastest selling version of the productivity tool. Over 80 million users around the world are using Office 365.

Microsoft also brought along its Metro UI, which is loaded on all Windows Phones and which is meant to deliver the same visual appeal to Windows 8 computers and tablets as well.

You can have a look at Steve Ballmer’s CES keynote in the video embedded below. More info can be found on the company’s official News website.