Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft Corp., may appear at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in early June to promote Microsoft’s technologies for Apple’s hardware and software platforms, an analyst said on Thursday. The software giant was quick to deny the information. But maybe there is no smoke without fire?

Trip Chowdhry, an analyst with tiny Global Equities Research, asserts that seven minutes of the June 7 keynote by Steve Jobs, chief executive officer of Apple, has been blocked off for a presentation by Microsoft. The analyst believes that the presenter will be Steve Ballmer himself, the CEO of the world’s largest software developer, reports Barron’s web-site.

The analyst believed that the head of Microsoft could talk about Visual Studio 2010 tool, which should allow development of applications for Apple’s iPhone, iPad or Mac OS; nonetheless, given the fact that Apple is now at war against Adobe and Google, Microsoft could also promote Bing search engine as well as Silverlight, a web application that integrates multimedia, graphics and interactivity.

Nevertheless, Microsoft rapidly denied any possibilities or Mr. Ballmer to appear at the WWDC.

“Steve Ballmer not speaking at Apple developer conference. Nor appearing on Dancing with the Stars. Nor riding in the Belmont,” an official response from Microsoft reads.

Although Microsoft officially said that its chief exec was not going to join WWDC, back in 1997 Bill Gates, the head of Microsoft then, did appear at the Apple developer’s conference to announce a $150 million investment into Apple (which, in fact, saved the company) and the intention to develop Microsoft Office and Microsoft Internet Explorer for Macintosh systems. At present Apple does not need money, but it still may take a lot of advantages of Microsoft’s technologies. Moreover, Microsoft itself could benefit a lot as well, hence, the partnership between two rivals cannot be excluded completely. At the end, Steve Ballmer is not the only high-ranking executive at Microsoft...

Tags: Apple, Microsoft, WWDC, Business