Ballmer: In a Year, 400 Million Devices Will Be Running the Latest Windows OS

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer expects great things from the company’s next-generation desktop and mobile operating systems. And he’s fully confident that they will deliver. So much so that he’s already proclaimed the next 12 months “the year for Windows” and begun setting some pretty high expectations for how Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 will perform at market.

“One year from now, between Windows phones, Windows tablets and Windows PCs, we’ll see close to … 400 million new devices running those new operating systems,” Ballmer said during the unveiling of Nokia’s new Lumia smartphones this morning. “Those devices running Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 represent the single largest opportunity for software developers today. Four hundred million per year? That is unrivaled. I’ll bet you right now, the next app developer to hit it really big will do so on Windows.”

That’s one ambitious number. But given Windows’ ubiquity on the PC desktop, it’s certainly in reach. The more interesting questions here are how many of those 400 million devices will be running Windows Phone 8, and how many of those running Windows 8 will be tablets.