No, he didn’t yell “developers, developers, developers” — maybe that’s too old-school at this point — but Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had another trick up his sleeve at the Build conference in Redmond this morning: A giveaway of Microsoft Surface tablets for the thousands of developers in attendance.

See the video above, to give you a sense for the reaction from the crowd — easily the biggest cheers of the morning.

Microsoft is using the conference to try to generate a critical mass of apps for the newly launched Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms.

Earlier in the keynote session, the company announced that apps are in the works from Dropbox and Twitter, among others. In addition, Ballmer said the company has sold 4 million Windows 8 upgrades.

Update: Scratch that part about the Surface giveaway garnering the biggest cheers. Nokia just gave away new Nokia 920 Windows Phones to the developers in the audience, also getting the crowd amped up.

 

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