Bill Gates, who built his fortune equipping the personal computer, predicts that the keyboard and mouse will soon become relics.

The founder of Microsoft Corp used his swansong to the technology industry on Sunday to spell out a vision of a “digital decade” of telephones, televisions and cars that respond to voice and touch.

“This is the area that people underestimate the most,” he said. Mr Gates, who plans to retire from day-to-day operations at Microsoft in July to oversee his $37 billion (£18 billion) charitable foundation, gave a keynote address to a packed 3,500-seat Las Vegas ballroom at the world’s largest consumer electronics show.

He predicted that high-definition video “will be everywhere” from TV to wall projections to screens built into desks. Users will be able to roam in 3-D through virtual worlds when they shop or interact online with friends. Devices will connect seamlessly so that data is transferred automatically from computer to mobile phone, for instance. “When you take a photo, it will show up where you want it to show up,” he said.

The software billionaire has used the annual Consumer Electronics Show to unveil products such as the Windows operating system and the Xbox 360 game console. But his visionary predictions have not always led to commercial success, as in the case of the touch-screen tablet computer.

In contrast, Apple Inc’s touch-screen iPhone and Nintendo’s Wii motion-sensing video game, which allows players to connect wirelessly to the screen, have won popular acclaim.

Providing a glimpse into the future, Mr Gates demonstrated a device called a Microsoft Surface that embeds a computer in a table top, showing how he could customise a snow-board in a shop. Just by running his fingers over the counter, he designed a snowboard with different colours and patterns. When he was happy with the result, he placed his mobile phone on the surface. The counter-top computer recognised the phone and wirelessly downloaded the design to the web.

Mr Gates’s presentation was met by some scepticism because of Microsoft’s failure to unveil any big new innovations at the show.

“Part of this has to do with Microsoft being tired of announcing new stuff that doesn’t ever materialise or shows up in a form very different than what was shown,” Michael Gartenberg, a Jupiter Research analyst, wrote in a web posting.

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