Use of 'would' when talking cautiously

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Hi,

The following text is from a company’s conference call. I wish to know why the speaker chose to use ‘would’ at the underlined places. Would those sentences not make sense if we removed the ‘would’ or replaced it with ‘will’?

[color=blue] if you go back and take a look at how we’ve grown that business, it really has been one large customer at a time. Now I would say at this point we are pleased that we’ve been able to establish a real market leadership position in this area. But we clearly do not have all the customers yet. …So certainly we remain confident that we can advance our leadership position to extend into other customers, but I would tell you that our near-term focus is really extending our share of wallet and our penetration of the existing consumer base that we have. …What I will remind everyone of though, is if you take a look at…

Thanks.

2

The use of ‘would’ in place of ‘will’ is soft and polite, or less assertive in nature. It may also be tentative in some cases. For example, ‘I would like to tell you a story.’, ‘Would you mind waiting there for a while?’ etc (We don’t use ‘will’ in these contexts)

3

Thanks Anglophile.