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Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who is worth about $14 billion, has gone paperless, and truly believes that the only difference between Microsoft and Apple in the mobile market is that the  iPhone  maker made one right decision--choosing ARM chips for its smartphone, rather than Intel's battery-hogging alternatives. That's about all you're going to learn about the man in  a sprawling seven-page profile from Businessweek . True to his desire to control how Microsoft is perceived by consumers, Ballmer let little go in the profile, and instead tried to keep positive about his company's prospects in 2012, saying the tech giant will have "a reset moment" this year. Related stories Ballmer highlights Windows Phone, Windows 8, Xbox Kinect (video) Ballmer reveals first LTE Windows Phone on AT&T (live blog) Microsoft: Kinect coming to Windows February 1 For Ballmer, 2012 could prove to be an important turning point in his career. This year will be the one whe...

Betting heavily on Microsoft to revive its fortunes, Nokia is in a position to sell as many as 37 million Windows Phone handsets this year and 64 million in 2013, says a Morgan Stanley report cited by  AllThingsD . Of course, much of that forecast depends on just how hard Microsoft will work to promote its partnership with Nokia. The two companies already reportedly plan to  spend $20 million  to market their new lineup. Nokia has been pushing its Lumia phones, with the  710 now available  through T-Mobile, the  800 selling in Europe , and the  LTE-compliant 900  sailing to the U.S., possibly  as soon as March . With AT&T set to carry the 900, Nokia is also counting on the folks at Big Red to lure in U.S. customers. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, and AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega took the stage together at  CES  on Monday to introduce and tease the 900 for the crowd. Already putting in a good word...

Microsoft has finally won second place among search engines. Carving out 15.1 percent of the market in December, Bing narrowly outstripped the 14.5 percent share eked out by Yahoo, according to data released yesterday by market researcher ComScore . Of course, Google still led the search engine market with a whopping 65 percent share. But December was the first month in which Microsoft outshone its competitor and partner Yahoo, according to a Citi analyst  cited by TechCrunch . As always, ComScore's numbers include only explicit core searches that people manually enter on a Web page. Under the hood, Microsoft and Yahoo use the same search engine technologies. But  Yahoo has been gradually shedding share  over the past year, while Bing has been soaking up more. A year ago, Yahoo's search market share was 16 percent, while Microsoft was stuck with only 12 percent. And though Google's lead has stayed firm, its share for December was slightly down from the 66...

Microsoft has struck another key patent-licensing deal in the  Android ecosystem.                                                            The software company announced today that it has inked a deal with LG that will see it license operating system patents for devices running Android and Chrome OS. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. LG has been relying heavily upon Android for its mobile push. At the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this week, the company showed off its new flagship device,  the LG Spectrum . The smartphone, which will be launching later this month, runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) and will be upgradeable to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). "We are pleased to have built upon our longstanding relationship with LG to reach a mutually beneficial agreement," Microsoft corporate vice president and deputy gene...

Three Musketeers: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, and AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega proudly show off the Nokia Lumia 900 at CES 2012. 2012 may mark Microsoft's  last major CES keynote and presence , but with two successful Windows Phone announcements, it's going out with a bang.  CNET named both the  HTC Titan II  and the  Nokia Lumia 900  finalists for the  Best of CES award  in the smartphone category, both supporting 4G LTE. Out of four total candidates, the Lumia 900 took the prize. Much has changed in a year. Last  CES , the newly minted Windows Phone operating system had just launched, completely overhauling the convoluted, bloated Windows Mobile operating system that proved incapable of surviving in a post-iPhone world. Although the community of mobile press journalists widely appreciated Windows Phone's simple, straightforward interface and unique design, the first wave of hardware mostly underwhelmed. Soft...