Gates aiming at 'breakthrough software'

DAVOS, JAN. 31. The Microsoft founder, Mr. Bill Gates, today said that what the Personal Computer (PC) could do via telephone lines had about reached its limits and that the next challenge for the PC industry would be cable applications.

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Mr. Gates said that with PCs being able to download music and picture content, the limits to what could be done via telephone lines had virtually been reached.

Instead, the next stage would be to link home PCs via broadband, or cable, he added.

``The issue now is how can broadband be made available at an affordable price,'' Mr. Gates said, adding that his company would be devoting itself to developing ``breakthrough software'' for PC-cable applications.

He said the Microsoft would continue what it had done for 25 years - developing software - and not be seeking to buy into content providers such as was the case in America Online's merger with Time Warner.

He said the Microsoft was now working on new software to protect users of mobile phones, the Internet and E-mail from a flood of ``information garbage'' pouring in.

``People are being flooded by garbage,'' he said, noting how this side effect of the electronic information revolution was consuming more and more of people's time.

His comments came at a panel discussion on the future of the Internet.

Commenting on the changes ahead posed by linkups between Internet providers and content companies as seen in the Aol-Time Warner merger, Mr. Gates predicted that ``five years from now more people would be reading People magazine from a screen rather than from paper.''

- DPA

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Section  : International
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