On October 30, 2012 Steve Ballmer kicked off the first BUILD conference keynote.

Steve shared some insights around Windows 8:

• 4 million customers upgraded to Windows 8 over the weekend since the October 26 release (so in 3 days only!).
• Focus on sharing code between Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8.
• Syncing everything through SkyDrive
• Xbox Music free streaming and Xbox Smart Glass.

He did all the demos himself, showing off great “Windows 8 generation” devices already available (including an 82-inch Windows 8 “slate” by Perceptive Pixel).

Steve Guggenheimer (Microsoft's Corporate Vice President DPE) talked about The Business Opportunity with Windows 8.

Notable announcements of day 1:

• The Windows Phone 8 SDK is now available at dev.windowsphone.com (includes SDK, free version of VS2012, Blend 5, and emulators).
• Release of the .NET Framework for Windows Phone 8: Ability to use C# 5 or Visual Basic 11 features in your code (async programming mode, ...), share code between WP8 and Windows Store apps.
• Windows Phone 8 individual developer registration is reduced to $8 for the next 8 days! (hurry up…)

Note: strange absence of Steven Sinofsky on stage…

Watch the entire keynote online:
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Build/2012/1-001

Read the full transcript:
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/Speeches/2012/10-30BuildDay1.aspx