Bill Gates predicts iPad and Android users will switch to PC tablets

Users of iPad and Android tablets might not have noticed, but a lot of them are "frustrated" because they "can't type, they can't create documents, they don't have [Microsoft] Office there". At least according to Bill Gates, who three years ago said of the iPad: "there's nothing on the iPad I look at and say 'Oh, I wish Microsoft had done it.'"

But with total iPad sales since April 2010 already past 141m, and total tablet sales according to IDC at 253m – of which fewer than 2m are the Surface RT or Surface Pro – one might wonder whether he's right.

Gates also says that a key problem for Microsoft in trying to grow its business in China is levels of piracy within government and large businesses there – a problem that it doesn't face elsewhere – and which has made it a "disaster" for revenue growth.

Speaking to CNBC, Gates – who is also a member of the board of Berkshire Hathaway, led by the legendary investor Warren Buffett – said Windows 8 is part of a blurring of the distinction between the PC and the tablet.

"Windows 8 is revolutionary in that it takes the benefits of a tablet and the benefits of a PC, and it's able to support both of those – so if you have Surface, Surface Pro, you've got that portability of a tablet but the richness of a PC in terms of the keyboard, Microsoft Office of a PC," Gates explained, when he was asked what's happening to the PC market – which, despite its swoons, still generates about $80bn (£51.4bn) in revenues annually.

- The Guardian