On Thursday, during a Churchill Club event in Santa Clara, California, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer addressed the crowd on issues such as the company’s ambitions in virtualization and search, its main rival Apple, but also other matters like the current U.S. economic situation.

He explained that the company is a rather small player when it comes to the search market segment, recording only 9 percent share in the United States. "While we have made a lot of progress, we still have a lot of work we need to do to try to fundamentally reinvent the search experience, the search business model," Mr. Ballmer said.

Reaching the topic about the virtualization market, he said that it is still in a very early stage, with less than 5 percent of the servers virtualized. "I see real opportunity to bring virtualization to a much higher percentage," Mr. Ballmer said, adding that the company’s Hyper-V virtualization technology and also its systems management platform have been received with great enthusiasm.

Talking about the IT economy, Mr. Ballmer said he considers that the U.S. market tends to receive harder hits than other countries and also that the business side is more impacted than the consumer market.

Asked about Apple’s direction, he explained that the reason why the company will not boost its share of the personal computer market or become a true threat for Microsoft is because it refuses to license its software to others. "Apple's a good company, [...] but they have a certain kind of strategy. They believe in putting the hardware and software together, they don't believe in letting other people make it."

He finished the discussion answering a question about his health, as many are concerned that he might be dealing with some problems. Mr. Ballmer assured everyone that he is doing fine and actually did a five-mile run before the event.