Microsoft could reasonably take a breather this year after the effort of shipping Windows 8 and Windows Phone and refreshing almost its entire product line in 2012. That, however, is not the plan. Shaw gives us a few hints about the coming year – and some clues to understanding Microsoft's wider strategy. "2013 is going to be a big year," he promises. "Yes, we shipped a bunch of stuff in 2012 but there's more coming."

"We've got some new stuff coming from Bing that is interesting and provocative and continues to move the needle in terms of how people think about search. And you have the work that we are doing with Skype. The move of Office to the cloud, Office as a subscription service for consumers and all the things that come with that; it's a big deal. And with Xbox we have more we're going to do. We're certainly not done with thinking about the living room and we'll have more to say about that as the year goes through."