Microsoft confesses to 14% global device market share

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner has admitted the firm is in the midst of re-inventing itself as it looks to catch up to its competitors.

In a wide-ranging keynote at the firm's annual Worldwide Partner Conference, Turner talked about market share, how it plans on targetting the low-end space and what it's doing to combat snooping. He also revealed brief details about Windows Threshold.

Global device market share

Turner claimed Microsoft has changed the way it measures success in the device space as it now looks at the market as a whole. He conceded the firm has just 14 per cent of global device market share when PCs, smartphones and tablets are tallied.

"The reality is the world's shifted, the world's evolved," WinBeta reported Turner as saying.

"We now measure ourselves by total device space. We have a much bigger opportunity than we've ever had in the past to grow our business, but we have to rethink how we look at our business."

Windows vs Chromebooks

As part of Microsoft's strategy to increase market share, Turner announced that a $199 HP Stream Windows laptop will go on sale at the end of the year. However, he stopped short of sharing the device's specifications on-stage.

He also revealed an 11.6in Toshiba laptop, with a 32GB SSD, will retail at $249, and 7/8in Windows tablets will be launched with a price-point of $99.

"We are going to participate at the low-end," The Verge reported Turner as saying.

"We've got a great value proposition against Chromebooks, we are not ceding the market to anyone."

Protecting data against government snooping

Turner reaffirmed Microsoft's commitment to protecting user data, noting it will take government authorities to court if necessary to protect information.

"We will not provide any government with encryption keys or assist their efforts to break our encryption. We will not engineer backdoors in the products," he was quoted as saying by Redmond magazine.

"We have never provided a business government data in response to a national security order. Never. And we will contest any attempt by the US government or any government to disclose customer content stored exclusively in another place. That's our commitment."

Windows Threshold

Little information was revealed about the next major edition of Windows, which is codenamed Threshold and is expected to be launched in Spring 2015.

Turner did claim the firm was listening to feedback from consumers and businesses and that the operating system will be a "great world-class enterprise OS."