Next week sees the start of MacWorld 2009 and CES 2009. A week in which Apple and Microsoft always try to out do each other.
In the past we"ve seen the iPhone announced alongside Microsoft releasing Windows Vista. What"s in store this year from Microsoft?
Steve Ballmer will begin his keynote on Wednesday 7th before the crowds fill the floors of the Las Vegas Convention Center on January 8th. The main focus of the keynote will be on Windows 7 and Xbox announcements. Ballmer will announce the beta of Windows 7 making it available to download for the public. Robbie Bach from Microsoft Entertainment & Devices is scheduled for some on stage time too. We expect him to talk about the upcoming Halo 3 Recon and Halo Wars, there should be some kind of game footage of these in action too. It"s possible that there might be some talk of the future of Xbox and the next generation Xbox but this could be too early in Microsoft"s schedule for now.
Ballmer is also expected to reveal that Flash on Windows Mobile is ready, Adobe demonstrated this functionality back in November 2008.
A final focus from Microsoft will be on home networking to make multiple PCs work together. Advancements in Windows 7 with netgroups will help with this vision but we could be in for some further announcements arround this area too.
Neowin will be live from CES next week, we have a CES 2009 section where you can follow all the latest news. If you are interested in watching Ballmer"s keynote live then there are several webstreams varying from 100K, 300K and 750K. The keynote will begin on Wednesday January 7 at 6.30pm PST (other timezones)