Gates Eyes Next Digital Decade

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates took center stage at the world's largest technology show for the last time on Sunday and predicted that his industry was on the cusp of the next "digital decade."

Gates, who plans to switch in July to a more limited role at the company he co-founded in 1975 with childhood friend Paul Allen, said computing will become a pervasive part of everyday life through devices like televisions, mobile telephones.

"Everything will connect up. You'll just take it for granted. No longer will users have to bridge between devices and remember what's where," Gates told the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"The trend here is clear, all media and entertainment will be digital driven. The first digital decade has been tremendously successful."

Gates had little to show off in the way of new gadgets.

"Part of this has to do with Microsoft being tired of announcing new stuff that doesn't ever materialize or shows up in a form very different than what was shown," Jupiter Research analyst Michael Gartenberg wrote in a Web posting.

"I still think that's a good approach but a little more zing would not have hurt," Gartenberg said.

Gates said this will be his last keynote address to CES—at least in his current role—and he showed a spoof video in which famous people like director Steven Spielberg and U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton rebuffed his pleas for new work.

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