20 Questions With Microsoft's Ballmer

Don't you think this will push the OEMs to do more innovative products?

I don't think it is going to hurt in terms of stretching innovation. It is the time. Windows 8 is a unique opportunity not just for us, but for everybody who builds applications, for everybody who builds computers.

Windows 8 is a unique opportunity. And if Surface galvanizes people around the opportunity to do hardware innovation, [so be it].

Because in a sense, we had ceded -- our ecosystem had ceded -- some of the boundary between hardware and software innovation to the other guys, the guys I don't like.