"It truly is a new era at Microsoft," he says in his to shareholders, and that means the company is focused on selling hardware augmented by cloud services.

"This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves as a devices and services company," Ballmer says in his letter.

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That includes both consumer products and those built for businesses, with a significant overlap that he hopes will leverage the bring-your-own-device movement to promote the use of personal devices in enterprise networks.