In keeping with the tradition of Microsoft kicking off the keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), the company's CEO Steve Ballmer gave the keynote speech at the trade show Wednesday night.

In his polished and approachable keynote speech, a confident and comfortable Ballmer initially alluded to three screens - PC, TV and smartphone - which are the top-priority for most of the consumer electronics (CE) companies. However, in due course, his focus shifted largely to Microsoft products.

Touting Microsoft's Xbox gaming console, Ballmer made a particular mention of the new motion-sensing Kinect controller, which he said will have a new feature added up this spring - the Avatar Kinect that will allow Xbox Live Gold members to generate avatars using facial and body recognition technology.

Further noting that Xbox Live has 30 million members, Ballmer said that Microsoft sold more than 8 million Kinect sensors worldwide during the first two months; with the company already having projected nearly 5 million unit sales during the holidays.

About Windows Phone 7, and touting 5,500 applications and 2,500 developers for the platform, Ballmer said that Windows Phone 7 would land on Sprint and Verizon networks during the first half of 2011.

Referring to the day's earlier announcement about the next version of Windows running on ARM processors and System on a Chip (SoC) architecture, Ballmer said that Windows support for SoC was "an important step for Microsoft and the industry."