Microsoft has said it expects to release a latest version of Windows around three years later than the introduction of Vista in January 2007. A Microsoft employee said Gates’s comments are in the development cycles that frequently release a test version of the software prior to its official introduction.

“That’ll be sometime in the next year or so that we’ll have a new version,” Gates said in reply to a query from the addressees.

Gates put down his day-to-day functions at Microsoft and contribute himself to the benevolent hard work of the Gates Foundation in June, said the company aimed, through its $6bn (£3bn) annual research and development budget, to acquire the products operating on its software to “the next level”.

He also said that new versions of Windows would facilitate, revolutionize mobile phones and run the desk of the future, which would have a touch surface display permitting the users to call up items with their hands.