Ballmer: we've shipped 1.5m Windows Phone 7 phones

Steve Ballmer has defended Microsoft's technology, games and claimed the Windows 7 Phone handsets are the best on the market.

Microsoft has been very cagey about the true sales figures for its new mobile platform since the launch of Windows 7 Phone in October and November 2010. In a recent interview with USA Today, but revealed Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer what is likely to be the only figure someone comes to hearing about for a while - that 1.5 million mobile phones were sold to carriers.

Microsoft's CEO is under increasing pressure, with a number of executives leaving the company and the rumors about his departure.

There is obviously a significant amount, but with a number of different phones (each sharing a minimum spec) from manufacturers such as HTC, Dell, LG and Samsung some real sales figures based on the phones that are in the hands of consumers will come in handy route about now only so we can judge exactly how well received platform.

But in an interview with an American newspaper, he sounded bullish about Microsoft's mobile success and his company's tech decisions.

Ballmer is obviously very proud of Windows 7 Phone, describes the phones as the best-looking phones on the market, and he's probably right, with a user interface that is significantly faster and more efficiently than any other.

We have the best-looking phones on the market There are a lot of competition, but we've gotten the best looking phones on the market, he said USA Today.

Remarkably for a man who once led many buy outs of Microsoft as the company extended its monopoly in the 1990s, has Steve Ballmer also turned down the chance to buy Research in Motion in favor of Microsoft to develop Windows 7 Phone as a quality product to sit alongside the Xbox 360 and Kinnect.

We have the widest range of options, phones, software, crafts.

Let's hope he can be proud of the sales figures when they finally revealed.

It is just as good or better than anything else out there.

We have much work to do, he admitted.

However, we are in the game.

We sold 1.5 million of operators [via OEM, that Microsoft provides with OS licenses].

Windows 7 Phone launched in October last year, and neither Microsoft or the mobile operators has revealed how many phones have been sold to customers.

In comparison, Apple sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 handsets in the first three days of availability.

Bing as a weedBallmer also quoted search and game two of their successes, next to the business market.

We have made bold technology bet, said Ballmer.

We have invested in the cloud, and our enterprise business, it's going great.

We made the game on the Xbox, we did invest in Kinect.

We focus on Bing and growing like a weed in that business, he added.

So I feel pretty good about the game.

Starting this month, Bing 3.3% global market share, according to Net Applications, but the search engine is also used by Yahoo, which has a 6.7% market share.