In a little noticed conference address, Microsoft Corp said that it would continue to see strong sales in the future, but that margins would be lower as a result of increased product development expenses: Maintaining what has been a record high profit margin will be difficult for us in the future, said Michael Hallman, Microsoft’s president, but I’m not telling you that we’ll fall off a cliff; Bill Gates, chairman, noted that Microsoft’s strong sales figures were the result of strong demand for Window 3.0 – Windows is the centre of the universe for us right now because it represents such a tremendous opportunity, he said, but the firm plans to invest heavily in development for networking software and database applications and to develop software that will enable people to use pens as the means for entering data into the computer.
