Microsoft Surface (“Surface”) is a commercial computing platform that enables people to use touch and real world objects to share digital content at the same time. The Surface platform consists of software and hardware products that combine vision based multitouch PC hardware, 360-degree multiuser application design, and Windows software to create a natural user interface (NUI) for users. Microsoft Surface 1.0, the first version of Surface, was announced on May 29, 2007 at the D5 Conference. It shipped to customers in 2008 as an end-to-end solution with Microsoft producing and selling the combined hardware/software platform. Microsoft and Samsung partnered to announce the current version of Surface, the Samsung SUR40 for Microsoft Surface (“SUR40”), at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in 2011. Samsung began shipping the new SUR40 hardware with the Microsoft Surface 2.0 software platform to customers in early 2012. Microsoft also provides the free Microsoft Surface 2.0 Software Development Kit (SDK) for developers to create NUI touch applications for Surface and Windows 7 touch PCs.

Coordinates: 47°38′22.55″N 122°7′42.42″W / 47.6395972°N 122.12845°W / 47.6395972; -122.12845

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on April 4, 1975 to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. Microsoft is one of the largest software corporations in the world.

Microsoft would also come to dominate the office suite market with Microsoft Office. The company has diversified into the video game industry with the Xbox and Xbox 360 consoles and the consumer electronics and digital services market MSN, the Zune and the Windows Phone OS. The ensuing rise of stock in the company's 1986 initial public offering (IPO) made an estimated three billionaires and 12,000 millionaires from Microsoft employees (Forbes 400 list revealed that in March 2011 both Jon Shipley and Nathan Myhrvold lost their billionaire status). In May 2011, Microsoft Corporation acquired Skype Communications for $8.5 billion.