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LAST ADDRESS: Mr Gates taking centre stage at CES for the last time before he reduces his working role at Microsoft. -- PHOTOS: REUTERS
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LAS VEGAS - MR BILL GATES took centre stage at the world's largest technology show for the last time yesterday and predicted that his industry was on the cusp of the next 'digital decade'.
In a keynote swansong address at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) before he reduces his working role to take up more charitable pursuits, the Microsoft Corp chairman predicted that the first digital age, which centred on the keyboard and mouse, would give way to a second digital age 'more focused on connecting people'.
Elaborating in an interview with BBC News, he said the new digital age would focus on more intuitive and natural technologies.
In particular, touch, vision and speech interfaces would become increasingly important.
'We are adding the ability to touch and directly manipulate, we are adding vision so the computer can see what you are doing, we are adding the pen, we are adding speech,' he told BBC News while showing off the Microsoft Surface computer, a large table-like machine with a multi-touch interface.
'I will be brave: In five years, we will have many tens of millions of people sitting browsing their photos, browsing their music, organising their lives using this type of touch interface,' he said.
Mr Gates, 52, will become Microsoft's part-time chairman in July and will spend most of his time at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the charity he set up to distribute tens of billions of dollars of his wealth.
He delivered his first keynote address to the CES in 1994 after co-founding Microsoft in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen.
In his presentation at the Las Vegas event this year - which was sprinkled with self-deprecating jokes and a finale featuring rock guitarist Slash - he predicted that more entertainment will be delivered via computer, and that personal computers will become easier to use.
'Everything will connect up. You will just take it for granted. No longer will users have to bridge between devices and remember what is where...
'All media and entertainment will be digitally driven.'
Announcing that this year's CES address would be his last - at least in his current role - he showed a spoof video in which famous people such as director Steven Spielberg and US Senator Hillary Clinton rebuffed his pleas for new work.
In future, Mr Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices division that makes products such as the Xbox 360 gaming console and Zune portable media player, will take a central role in delivering the address.
When Mr Gates gave his first talk at CES, computers were in a minority of homes and were essentially isolated there because Web browsers had not made the Internet an easy place to roam.
The intervening years saw Microsoft rise to become one of the most powerful companies in the world. But the aura of invincibility has been eroded in the past few years as Internet-focused companies such as Google have stolen some of the spotlight.
'Gates is leaving at the moment when the industry is becoming a lot muddier and more competitive,' analyst Roger Kay of Endpoint Technologies Associates said. 'Microsoft will never again be as dominant as it was during the 1990s.'
About 2,700 exhibitors are taking part in this year's CES, which began yesterday in Las Vegas and ends on Thursday.
LOS ANGELES TIMES, REUTERS
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