It makes sense that Bill Gates would be tech's biggest optimist. For one, it's hard to be down when you're holding $33 billion of Microsoft stock. Then there's the fact that even in 2002's IT slump his company prospered, growing 20%-plus each quarter and posting a phenomenal 35% after-tax profit margin. Yet he has reason to worry: Last fall Microsoft revealed that outside of operating systems and Office, it can't seem to make money. Xbox, MSN, and the company's software for small businesses, set-top boxes, handheld devices, and cellphones together produce well over $1 billion in operating losses a year and generate a scant 15% of Microsoft's $28 billion in revenues. To find out what's keeping Gates so chipper, FORTUNE's Brent Schlender sat down with the Microsoft chairman for more than 90 minutes in late December. What Gates presented was an argument for hope in his industry that arises from his faith in the inexorable march of information technology--something he has come to call simply the "magic."
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