When Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, gives his keynote address on Monday at the international exhibition here he plans to show off some of the company's latest technology - software that powers mobile phones, online game
machines and television services.
Those areas are crucial to the company's long-term strategy, but the initiatives are all bleeding money. And so the industry is watching to see whether Microsoft, as it enters middle age, can be innovative enough to compete effectively in software platforms beyond the personal computer. The goal is to provide software giving consumers access to content from a variety of gadgets: showing family slides on a personal computer, television or game console, for example, or tapping into a personal music library from a mobile phone, TV, laptop or stereo.
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