DAVOS JANUARY 31 : Bill Gates said on Monday that the next challenge for the PC industry would be cable applications. "What the personal computer could do via telephone lines has about reached its limits", he said at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Gates said that with PCs being able to download music and picture content, the limits to what could be done via telephone lines, had virtually been reached. Instead, the next stage will be to link home PCs via broadband or cable, he said."The issue now is how can broadband be made available at an affordable price," Gates said, adding that his own company would be devoting itself to developing breakthrough software'' for pc-cable applications.
He made clear that Microsoft would continue what it has done for 25 years- developing software -and not be seeking to buy into content providers such as was the case in America Online's merger with Time Warner.
He said Microsoft was now doing on new software to protect users of mobile phones, the internet and e-mail from a flood of information garbage pouring in. "People are being flooded by garbage," he said, noting how this side effect of the electronic information revolution is consuming more and more of people's time. His comments came at a panel discussion on the future of the internet. Gates predicted that "five years from now, more people will be reading `people' magazine from a screen rather than from paper''.
Copyright © 2000 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.