Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer this morning sounded like a football coach talking up his underdog team at a pep rally, telling the crowd at the company's Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C., not to count his company out in mobile phones or slate computers, despite the momentum displayed by its rivals.

Without mentioning Apple, iPad or any other competitors by name, Ballmer showed the slide above to give the crowd a sense for the new Windows 7-based devices coming from Microsoft and its partners this year.

"You need to see between us and our hardware (partners), a range of slates and a range of phones that you can take to your customer when they come with this, that or the other random device that's not currently supported by corporate IT," Ballmer said via webcast. "We want to give you a great device, a consumer oriented device, but a device that fits and is manageable with today's enterprise IT solutions."

The comments come as mobile operating systems such as Apple's iOS and HP's newly acquired Palm WebOS are rising up to power slate-style computing devices in competition with Microsoft Windows. Microsoft, which has lost traction in its mobile software business over the past year, is coming at the slate market with its more traditional PC operating system.

Ballmer's remarks came in the context of a larger speech about cloud computing, underscoring how much the topic of phones and slates are on the minds of its partners and customers. The Microsoft CEO made it clear that the company will attempt to leverage its strength and familiarity to corporate IT departments to gain ground in those areas.

"This is a terribly important area for us," Ballmer said. "It's certainly an area where -- how do I say it? -- we feel all of the energy and vigor and push that we have ever felt to innovate, to drive hard, to compete. We know that you as partners are hearing from our joint customers that they have a lot they want to do not just at home but at work. ... Scenarios in which they believe in the slate as a device, scenarios where they want to embrace the smartphone. And we have to really push this from a Microsoft perspective. "

He said the upcoming devices will come in many sizes, prices and forms, with ink and touch-based input, running Windows 7 and applications made for the PC operating system.

"We are hardcore about this," he said, "I know I've heard from a lot of partners that this is an area where you really want to know what's coming with Windows 7. There's a lot of stuff coming over the next several months, and we have to be prepared to get after it together."

Update: As reader Romit Mehta points out on Twitter, it's notable that Ballmer's slide of upcoming Windows 7 slates references HP, despite the computer maker's Palm acquisition, suggesting that HP isn't going entirely with the WebOS on slate-style devices.