In remarks to an analyst gather at Microsoft‘s Redmond headquarters, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer noted that if current trends hold, the installed base of Windows PCs worldwide will reach 1 billion during the next 12 months, which represents Microsoft’s 2008 fiscal year.

"If you stop and just think about that, parse that for a second," said Ballmer, "by the end of our fiscal year ’08, there will be more PCs running Windows in the world than there are automobiles, which is at least to me kind of a mind-numbing concept."

Microsoft noted that it has sold 60 million copies of Windows Vista this year, including 40 million copies in the operating systems’ first 100 days of availability. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner also touted the security of Windows Vista compared to previous versions of Windows and other operating systems "In the first 180 days we’ve had far fewer high-severity vulnerabilities than XP. We’ve had 12 in Vista. We had 25 in XP. [..] Windows Vista had far fewer than Apple, as well as any major desktop Linux distributor. And that’s something, again, we feel very good about from a security and reliability standpoint."

Even though Microsoft remains by far the dominant player in PC operating systems, Ballmer insists Microsoft will be transitioning its business to new arenas, represented by products like the Xbox and Zune, and but its purchases of ad firms aQuantive and (just yesterday) of AdECN, Inc.: "We are going to be an advertising company, and we are going to be a devices company," Ballmer said, noting Microsoft is currently the number-three seller of online ads.