is our new Microsoft Business Solutions CRM, which provides mid-sized businesses with powerful tools to build profitable customer relationships, improve sales, and deliver efficient service.



We see opportunities to transform how people use technology at home and on the move, with software for telephones, all the electronic devices in the living room, and personal wear, as well as games and educational software for consumers. Last year we launched many important new consumer products, including Windows Powered Smart Displays, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows Powered Smartphones, MSN 8, and Xbox Live.



Responsiveness to customers

Providing value to customers means not only building great products, but also listening carefully to customers, responding quickly, and being more transparent and accountable.



We responded to business customers’ concerns about our licensing programs with a new Software Assurance program, recently enhanced, that provides more assistance, more support and training options, more predictability, and more value 

than ever before.



We listened to customers’ concerns about product quality, and responded with a companywide drive for Trustworthy Computing, aimed at constant improvement in reliability, security, privacy, and business integrity. We have made significant progress, and this important work will continue long into the future.



We have intensified our focus on engineering excellence to help ensure that our products are not only more trustworthy but also more compatible, scalable, and manageable. We continue to enhance the capabilities of our products to automatically detect problems, perform diagnostics, apply known solutions, and prevent future problems. We have made progress in improving our product support operations, and we will help customers solve problems with more consistent documentation and richer Web services.



In short, we are committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that our customers are highly satisfied with our products and services. Underscoring our commitment, we recently revised the incentive system for hundreds of our senior leaders so a significant part of their equity compensation depends on progress in the number and satisfaction of our customers.



Supporting developers

The popularity of Windows derives in large part from its support for the broadest array of applications. Microsoft has a long history of providing programmers with state-of-the-art tools and services that make it easy and rewarding to develop for our platform.



Our new Visual Studio .NET 2003 is the most advanced and complete set of software development tools, enabling developers to greatly improve their productivity with a single programming model for PC, mobile, and Web applications. It is the definitive tool set for building Web services with the .NET Framework.



We also are expanding efforts to build deeper relationships with developers. For example, we are pairing our developers 

with industry peers to help us better understand their needs and help them with their issues. And we are making Windows development more accessible to a wide range of programmers, including students, novices,