STEVE BALLMER

Stock index futures were little changed on Thursday as investors looked ahead to data that could shed light on the economy's health amid worries that global demand was slowing.

Stock index futures pointed to a higher open on Wall Street on Thursday, with futures for the S&P 500 up 0.35 percent, Dow Jones futures up 0.4 percent and Nasdaq 100 futures up 0.35 percent at 4:50 EDT.

Software giant Microsoft should replace Steve Ballmer as its Chief Executive, Greenlight Capital Inc. President David Einhorn said at the Ira Sohn Investment Conference in New York.

Steve Ballmer is wrong. Windows 8 will not be released in 2012, and when the next version is released, it may not be called Windows 8, after all.

The coming of the next version of Windows in 2012, as announced by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during a speech at a developer conference in Tokyo might just be a speculation as the company is yet to confirm on its date and OS features, reports PC World.

The days of Android-ARM exclusive partnership are under threat as Acer is due to launch Android 3.0 or Honeycomb-based 10.1-inch tablet powered by Intel's Oak trail chip.

Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer confirmed on Monday, that the company's next generation of Windows systems will be released in 2012 and new Windows phone with 500 additional features will be launched in Japan at the end of this year.

International Business Machines (IBM) has edged past old rival Microsoft Corp in market value for the first time since April 1996.

Software giant Microsoft's next operating system Windows 8 will be available in 2012, said the company's chief Steve Ballmer at the Microsoft Developer Forum in Tokyo on Monday.

Microsoft will launch next year its much talked about Windows 8, the latest version of its operating system, CEO Steve Ballmer said in Tokyo on Monday. Ballmer said developers were hard at work on the next version of Windows, but did not drop any clue to its rumored features circulating around the Internet.

International Business Machines edged past old rival Microsoft Corp in market value for the first time since April 1996, marking the latest twist in the fluctuating fortunes of two of the world's most storied technology companies.

Finnish mobile maker Nokia will introduce a new ‘Search’ feature on its mobile phones which will allow users to locate a particular place at just a click, a report in the Nokia official blog said.

On Tuesday Microsoft announced details of a $8.5 billion acquisition of online communications company Skype, but the move, conjuring up past initiatives, are leaving analysts bracing for the worse.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and Skype CEO Tony Bates jointly announced on Tuesday that the two companies have entered into a deal under which Microsoft will acquire Skype for $8.5 billion. Apart from creating value and emerging as a strategically important player in the voice and chat connectivity segment of the exploding web business, Skype also won real big time suitors like Microsoft, Google and Facebook. Perhaps the rivals' attempt to outbid each other and own Skype resulted in the Estoni...

Microsoft snubbed investment banks for its largest deal ever, saving an estimated $25 million to $30 million by not using an adviser on the $8.5 billion takeover of Internet phone service Skype.

Microsoft vows to support Skype on non-Windows platforms.

Microsoft brings aboard Skype for $8.5 billion. With Skype, Microsoft is getting an established player in the increasingly competitive voice and video calling market. Skype has 170 million connected users and logged over 207 billion minutes of voice and video conversations in 2010.

The company says the only reason it may have brought a product late to the market was because of quality.

Research In Motion will use Microsoft's Bing search engine and maps as default options on its new BlackBerry devices, a victory for the software giant as it eyes the booming mobile phone market.

Research In Motion said on Tuesday it would give out more than 6,000 PlayBook tablet computers to participants at its BlackBerry World conference in Orlando, Florida.

Microsoft Corp plans to broadly raise salaries and stock awards to attract and retain top talent, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said in an internal memo obtained by Reuters on Thursday.