Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hideous

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/07/30/microsoft_surface_sales_disaster/

by ytNumbers • 13 years ago

137 201 13 years ago

theregister.co.uk

conroy• 13 years ago

Could we please change the headline? No need to scream in HN headlines. Edit: thanks mods

e3pi• 13 years ago

"Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hideous"

Could we please change the headline? No need to scream in HN headlines.

Don't blame the mirror when you see the reality of who you truly are.

AceJohnny2• 13 years ago

Ben Kuchera of the Penny Arcade Report has a scathing and spot-on review of Microsoft's advertising strategy for the Surface (as well as for the rest of their product line).

It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves.

http://penny-arcade.com/report/article/microsoft-is-killing-...

seanmcdirmid6• 13 years ago

It's interesting that PA's Mike "Gabe" Krahulik had a better pitch than MS themselves.

Surface Pro is quite a different beast from Surface RT. I think Gabe was just in love with the Waccom stylus, which is not really unique to the Pro (other tablets have this also).

Tloewald7• 13 years ago

Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device. My initial take too. But having played with several Surface Pros, i found the device so lackluster I opted to buy a Yiynova display/tablet for half as much money, i don't need to mess with Windows 8 or buy new software.

The real problem with Surface is that it's a crappy overall device. The two keyboard options both suck. Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate so the serious applications such as office are weak.

Yes, it's a great portable sketchpad, so Gabe is sold.

DigitalJack• 13 years ago

How long have you had the yiynova? Can you give a quick review?

anigbrowl4• 13 years ago

Their take on it was that it's a great artists' device.

Well, visual artists at least. No existing audio software runs on it, and it doesn't even support playback of MIDI files. I remain somewhat interested in a Surface Pro, but (like Google, and like MS themselves on Windows for years) the Surface is only useful to musicians for checking email.

moocowduckquack• 13 years ago

The main thing I want a tablet for is as a good sketchpad, ideally one that is fine with using a wood stylus so I can easily cut a stick to different nib shapes when I'm working.

ximeng3• 13 years ago

"Microsoft is hopeless at managing screen real estate" - not sure where this blanket statement is coming from, but the desktop option on Windows 8 works perfectly well for me on the Pro. Keyboard could be better, but works well enough (type keyboard at least, I didn't like the touch keyboard). Screen is high res and looks nice, stylus works well. For me it's been more happy than crappy overall.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

It's easy to blame marketing for Surface's failure, but I don't think that's the whole or even the most of it. If you read the reviews, nearly all mentioned or hinted at one thing: you should probably wait for the next iteration. And that's absolutely a product management failure, not a marketing failure. In tech, it is always the case that the next version of a product will be better, but it's a product design failure if the limitations of the device leave the user hankering for the upgrade from Day 1.

Re: Surface RT, Microsoft launched at the same price point as the iPad 4, but substantially later, with a last-generation CPU/GPU, non-Retina screen, and a buggy, slow, pre-release version of Office RT. That last point was inexcusable, a product management fuck up of Apple Maps proportions. The whole point of Surface RT was Office, and every review of the device said "Office RT is slow and buggy." The overwhelming feeling with Surface RT is that "I'm really going to be kicking myself in 6 months when they release the next version with flagship specs to match the flagship price."

Re: Surface Pro, Microsoft launched at a Macbook Air 11" price point, without the Air's great keyboard and with substantially weaker battery life (in Engadget's test, half the battery life of the comparably-sized Acer W700). The overwhelming feeling with Surface Pro was "I'm really going to be kicking myself when they release the next iteration with Haswell and usable battery life."

On top of all that, the segmentation was arbitrary and capricious. What's the difference between Surface RT and Surface Pro? It's an explanation that probably makes sense to a marketing guy somewhere trying to differentiate SKUs, but not one that I think resonated with consumers. Nexus 7 versus Nexus 10, iPad versus iPad Mini. That's how to do product differentiation--in a way that's immediately obvious to the consumer.

There was also some weird design choices. Why the extreme wide-format screen? Did anybody even try reading a Word document in portrait mode on the thing? I can understand the format for consumer-oriented tablets, but Surface was supposed to be a "real work" office machine! Why are there two ways to manage settings, one set in Metro and another set in the Desktop? Why do so many things require going into the Desktop anyway? Who thought it was even a good idea to expose the user to two completely different UI's in the same device?

barista3• 13 years ago

regarding comparison with iPad, the CPU GPU combination does not matter because Surface was/is still plenty fast with the hardware it has. Agree on the screen and Office though. Although office was updated a month or two after the release and fixed the performance issues in time. I wouldn't necessarily attribute the problems to that. Marketing seems to have come around and have started chaning the message and attacking the iPad more directly in adverts like this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86JMcy5OqZA and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE7AQY5Xk9w

plus the reduced price should help make it attractive. It's one very functional device though. Just today I read an article of how it was perfect for a student. Will update with a link if I find it.

phaus2• 13 years ago

It's easy to blame marketing

Did you see the commercial? It actually is easy to blame marketing. The surface commercial was easily the worst commercial I've seen in my life. Wasn't entertaining, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the product. Even worse was the mini-documentary Microsoft released afterwards that bragged about how awesome every aspect of the commercial was.

That, as you mentioned, is only part of the problem. RT is a disaster. The person who conceived the idea should have known that it would never succeed, because never before in the history of the world has there ever been a product that the public so obviously didn't want.

No one ever said, "I want a Windows device, but make sure it isn't capable of running Windows software."

I've been a happy Windows user since 95, but I'm starting to lose faith in Microsoft.

yulaow6• 13 years ago

Let's talk about office

MS was like "Whoa we are giving you the tablet with office 'cause you ever dreamed a tablet with office and you totally hate a tablet without office". Ballmer almost said something totally equal to it

Problem is, in the last year, market has showed that no one need a tablet with office and that office is not more a killer feature, mainly for the common users market (it has still sense in corporation market).

So they pushed and pushed on this feature when it was practically useless to convince anyone to buy an rt. This is another reason to blame failure ALSO on the marketing part of MS.

ximeng3• 13 years ago

Windows 8 is a bit weird in the split between metro and desktop, and I feel these need to merge in the future. I hardly use metro apps because they don't work nicely with other apps, e.g. can't shift from one screen to another, resizing is difficult.

Surface RT I can't really see a market for. But Surface Pro is perfectly OK, competitive with laptops, some advantages (touch screen and stylus are nice), good screen with support for second screen, easy switch between laptop and tablet mode, some disadvantages but nothing too bad - keyboard just OK, battery just OK, only one USB port on the machine, etc. All in all next version will be nicer I'm sure, but I have one and I'm pretty happy with it and am not too worried about getting the next iteration - it works fine for me as is.

lostlogin• 13 years ago

A fuck up of Apple Maps proportions. I disagree. Maps is so far down the list of things that are critical to Apple, but Office is either number 1 or 2 for Microsoft. And how many products does Microsoft make money on? Apple doesnt make much from Maps.

danielweber• 13 years ago

Microsoft should be Microsoft and stop trying to be Apple.

Microsoft isn't cool, and that's okay. Microsoft is the boring boyfriend you know is always there and will always load Office documents easily (see 'rayiner below). It's not sexy but it doesn't have to be.

melling• 13 years ago

Microsoft sucks, plain and simple. They really always have. I've been following the PC industry for 30 years. Microsoft won because of Office (Excel, Word, Powerpoint) at a relatively cheap combo price, cheap clone PC's, and the fact that they forced clone makers to pay for DOS no matter which OS they shipped. PC makers had to basically ship DOS/Windows, killing off any hope that BeOS, OS/2, etc would gain any foothold. Apple was never really any competition because they were overpriced.

Once the need for Office goes any, then any operating system will work for many people. Linux has finally won in the consumer space in the form of Android. Hopefully, we'll see a huge flood of "desktop/notebook" Android/Chromebook devices. Get "Office" in the cloud and the 90% desktop monopoly that Microsoft has had for two decades finally goes away. Don't get me wrong... This isn't Microsoft being the wrong company to have a monopoly, it's just silly that any company has a 90% market share. We don't buy 90% of our cars from General Motors.

Let's get a little more innovation in the consumer space. Google, Apple, Microsoft, and maybe even... Ubuntu dividing up the market will be better for everyone.

njr1232• 13 years ago

Microsoft isn't cool, and that's okay

Isn't that pretty much the attitude that RIM had as well? This is not a successful strategy when you have to compete with a new class of devices.

Zigurd• 13 years ago

OK, so you run a company with practically infinite resources, an OS that is portable across architectures, and a managed language runtime that's portable across architectures that powers hundreds of thousands (millions?) of useful applications with a suite of languages including what is arguably a nicer language than Java.

You see Android running the same apps on multiple mobile device architectures using Java and the Dalvik VM. That's a technology you had since 13 years ago with NETCF.

Hmmm. What to do? What to do? I KNOW: Let's segment the market by blowing off compatibility with a gazillion apps my enterprise customers have written and use and let's use Surface RT to go for a Quixotic attempt to beat Apple and Google with Modern apps which are over-sandboxed and can't talk to .NET apps.

That comes off as derisive, but how do you say it nicer? They lost a billion dollars in a write-down - not a write-off - doing that, and not one word about "Gee, can we fix the product formulation?"

Well, at least they didn't buy Motorola. That's going to be a write-down that leaves a mark.

cryowaffle• 13 years ago

Google bought Motorola as a defensive patent move, it's almost completely intangible.

cremnob• 13 years ago

That's not working out too well.

http://www.theverge.com/2013/4/26/4271432/does-anyone-know-w...

strandev• 13 years ago

12.5+ billion dollars isn't intangible, even for Google.

hkmurakami4• 13 years ago

before the Motorola acquisition, Google's patent arsenal was in the hundreds, which was abysmally small for a company that size. This probably stemmed from their ideals and their culture, but the ugly reality is that companies need patent arsenals to protect themselves.

There is a reason why no one messes with IBM with a patent war. The counter punch would murder anyone who'd try. Maybe Google now has enough patents to deter most of the absurd threats, and given their cash flow, even the huge cost of the Motorola acquisition may be "worth it" as a contingency plan and a risk hedge.

jussij4• 13 years ago

This probably stemmed from their ideals and their culture, but the ugly reality is that companies need patent arsenals to protect themselves.

I'm sure that's what Google was hoping for.

But it appears the 12 billion paid for those patents don't seem to be offering too much in the way of protection, as they keep losing in the courts.

http://www.fosspatents.com/2013/04/april-was-disastrous-for-...

Add to that, the additional Motorola restructuring costs and Motorola’s inability to make a profit, it's starting to look like the purchase won’t be far off from a total right down.

Sven7• 13 years ago

Moving from desktop to mobile keeping compatibility (with a huge base - a challenge no one else had - possibly only nokia transitioning from dumb to smart) isn't a trivial problem by any stretch of the imagination. They took a swing in a very unpredictable and hyper competitive market. It had to be a big swing and it didn't work. Its a shame cause I think their dev tools/platform/languages are solid. I enjoyed working with C#/WPF/xaml in comparison with Android/java/flash and the current hodge podge of web tech.

joseph_cooney• 13 years ago

This x 100. The CLR was designed for this from the ground up (or they copied the design from Java, take your pick). As you pointed out, they've had a working implementation forever in the form of the .NET Compact Framework. And yet they went with the 'strategy' they went with.... You couldn't make this shit up if you tried...

edandersen• 13 years ago

Windows RT has a full version of .NET 4.5, the only thing stopping it running your own pure "AnyCPU" binaries is the signature check.

freehunter3• 13 years ago

Anyone remember Microsoft's last huge push into the hardware market, the Xbox? How would this headline have looked in 2001? If we remember, Microsoft took seven straight year-over-year billion dollar losses until the Microsoft gaming division finally posted a profit in 2008.

I don't mean to directly compare Windows RT with the Xbox, the point I'm making is that Microsoft is used to sustaining huge losses for long time periods until they finally capture the market they want.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/148982/xbox.html

chrischen2• 13 years ago

Yea but the Xbox had user adoption. What does the Surface have?

hkmurakami4• 13 years ago

What was user adoption like in year 1 of the XBox? I seem to remember that it really wasn't that hot, especially outside of the US (I remember it basically outright failing in Japan, but that's probably due to a combination of nationalism and a mismatch in the titles available to local tastes).

joonix• 13 years ago

Is the Nexus 7 posting huge losses? I'm pretty sure it's profitable. Microsoft is doing something wrong. Years of unprofitability is not a prerequisite for profitability.

hkmurakami4• 13 years ago

well you can't always be sure since many suspect that the Nexus 4 is a loss making device for LG (certainly before the redesign to fix the LCD yield issue).

Negitivefrags• 13 years ago

In this case, they didn't just branch out in to a new market. They took their flagship product (Windows) and redesigned it in to something that most would consider to be a massive failure.

mmastrac• 13 years ago

They spent quite a bit on the Zune without getting much traction. Sure, they "pivoted" some of the experience into Windows Phone, but that product basically sunk to the bottom of the market.

freehunter3• 13 years ago

I'd say that Microsoft didn't so much fail at the Zune as they realize that the PMP market wasn't a place where success could happen even after dropping billions per year. Zune became part of Xbox Live, Windows 8, and Windows Phone. Apple is the only major player in the PMP market for a reason, Android has barely even touched that space. Everyone I know who used a Zune loved the experience, although it was ridiculously easy to make fun of. The problem is, PMPs are a niche market, and upending the iPod will cost more than any profits there are to be had.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

Don't forget the MS Kin: a half billion dollars in development, just 500 units sold.

jryle70• 13 years ago

The difference: MS's competitors are not named Sony and Nintendo this time. Apple and Google move faster than MS; enjoy huge brand name recognition; have as much resource as MS does. One may only look at Google vs. Bing to see it. Windows Live Search was introduced in 2006, following by Bing. How much market share has it captured?

Another difference: the ecosystems of iOS and Android dwarf that of the games market, making playing catch up much harder (when will Nokia catch up to Samsung?)

Can MS become a viable tablet option? Absolutely. MS has limitless pocket. Will it be focused and nimble enough to do it? That's still an open question. Meanwhile, the competition doesn't stand still.

MBCook7• 13 years ago

But Microsoft was trying to enter a new market with the XBox, and the rest of the company was doing very well. It was an offensive move to prevent Sony or someone else from dominating gaming.

But the Surface is defensive. They made fun of the iPad as worthless but the truth is that it (and other tablets and smartphones) are eating away at what used to be a very secure customer base.

lazyBilly• 13 years ago

It is not an entirely foregone conclusion that the losses Microsoft incurred to break into an infamously cutthroat industry were a good idea from a business standpoint. To say nothing of whether 2013 Microsoft can afford to invest the kinds of sums it would take to break Apple and Google's hold on the market.

zmmmmm2• 13 years ago

Two things about Xbox:

1. they actually had the time to let brute force work

2. it was well isolated from their main business - no matter how badly they failed each year, it did not, for example, take away office or windows sales.

But the tablet space is different. There are already enough iPads in workplaces now that people are re-thinking their dependence on MS office since they can't get anything with full compatibility. Android tablets are only just starting to impinge there but they will eventually as well. People are already talking about Android PCs too. The OEM partners are all shipping Win8 tablets but they are also shipping Android tablets and they have very little allegiance or dependence on MS in the tablet space. So MS has to anticipate they will not be able to charge high prices for Windows on cheap consumer laptops and tablets forever. Those days are over. The only way MS can be sure to maintain their margins is if they get a high margin hardware business going like Apple has.

So I would argue that Surface is a very key part of Microsoft's bid to stay relevant and it directly ties to their core business rather than being a parallel venture like Xbox was.

rschmitty2• 13 years ago

How exactly did they have time to let brute force work? You say that as if PlayStation/Nintendo were nobodies that MS could just casually let time sink in to turn a profit

jussij4• 13 years ago

Microsoft took seven straight year-over-year billion dollar losses until the Microsoft gaming division finally posted a profit in 2008.

This page suggest XBox still has accumulated losses of 3 billion:

http://www.neowin.net/news/report-microsofts-xbox-division-h...

But I agree with you. Because these are strategic decision with long term agendas, to know if they succeed or fail will take many years if not decades.

zmmmmm2• 13 years ago

This is an interesting counter to the popular wisdom about what can be achieved with marketing. An unlimited marketing budget may be necessary but it is not sufficient, even with a notionally attractive proposition like the surface. It cannot overcome fundamental product issues like being too expensive, lacking killer applications, poor product targeting (who is the Surface RT really for?), or even just entrenched negative consumer perception. I think the Surface RT had all these issues and the marketing was not all that great on top of it.

Aldo_MX2• 13 years ago

Without the ability to recompile desktop apps I don't see a good reason to have a WinRT device. Office is not enough.

rschmitty2• 13 years ago

Thats like saying your iPad is worthless because non of the OSX apps work on it

If MS had the insane push of apps that iOS did your statement would not be an issue

Aldo_MX2• 13 years ago

My point is: What's the reason to enable the Desktop if you won't be able to run Desktop Apps? To play Minesweeper and use MS Paint? The Desktop doesn't even make sense in a Tablet!

In my honest opinion I perceive the desktop as a last-resort when "there's not an app for that", and considering that "there are not a lot of apps for that" in Windows RT, for me it's ridiculous that they didn't allow the ability to use the desktop the way we have been using it in the last 18 years.

If Microsoft were serious against the iPad they should have included the full Desktop experience in the first place.

coldcode3• 13 years ago

As much as I used to hate them (competed vs Excel in the 1980s and lost) now I mostly pity them. I was at Apple in 1995 and it was both depressing and sad that a once great company was on death's door. But other than a huge amount of cash (which Apple sure didn't have, they even took away our popcorn maker) there doesn't seem to be a savior on the horizon.

sirkneeland5• 13 years ago

That anecdote could just as easily show how no all is lost for Microsoft..."See how doomed Apple looked, and look at them now!"

gruseom2• 13 years ago

competed vs Excel in the 1980s and lost

I'd like to hear more about that. What was the product? Why did it lose?

coldcode3• 13 years ago

Trapeze was a very different kind of spreadsheet program, more like a cross between a numerical Mathematica and a spreadsheet. It was not built on the traditional row and column grid. We made the mistake of trying to market vs Excel when in reality it was a higher level modeling tool. I still get emails from former users who still remember it fondly.

boyter2• 13 years ago

I predict that a refreshed Surface Pro with Haswell will sell quite well. I know that it is a product I want to buy (or a Transformer with Haswell whichever comes first).

The Surface Pro is an excellent device let down only by battery life IMHO.

ihsw2• 13 years ago

Haswell works well in the laptop space, but Intel's tablet/mobile offerings aren't there yet.

About seven months ago an Intel CPU architect/designer did a Q+A session on reddit, and here is a choice quote:

For mobile, we have no choice but to become relevant. As for when, my personal prediction for substantial growth is Q1 2014, domination in 2015.

Source: http://r2.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/15iaet/iama_cpu_archite...

boyter2• 13 years ago

The thing is I don't see the Surface Pro as a tablet so much as an ultra-book that can be a tablet. I want it as a highly portable laptop that I can use as a tablet on the way home.

For me Surface Pro with 6+ hours of battery life (which Haswell should give it) would be perfect.

harigov2• 13 years ago

I loved Surface Pro but I felt that if they replaced i5 with an Atom [or atleast give it as an option], that would improve the battery life, reduce heat, make it slimmer and cheaper. Overall it would be everything that I want.

tomkarlo2• 13 years ago

So if I'm interpreting this right, they did $853 of sales on two product lines that probably had about an $700 and $1200 average sales price (including accessories like the keyboard that attach at time of sale.)

It depends on the mix, but is that something like 750K units of Surface RT and 200K units of Surface Pro? (Not ridiculously terrible for a first effort, but obviously disappointing given the marketing spend.) Why doesn't the article estimate the units?

michaelpinto• 13 years ago

If Microsoft is going to succeed they'll have to make mistakes. And the Surface shows some original thinking which I haven't seen before. So I think we should be rooting for Microsoft to bring new things to the industry because that benefits everyone else in the space. And I say this as a long time Apple fanboy...

mynameisvlad• 13 years ago

But Microsoft is the devil's incarnate, didn't you know?! /s

sirkneeland5• 13 years ago

I concur. I instinctively root for underdogs, which is why I rooted for Apple in the 90s and 2000s. Never thought I'd find myself rooting for MSFT as an underdog, but that's the tech industry for you!

purplelobster4• 13 years ago

I honestly think the Metro UI is pretty neat. I don't really like most of the apps I've tried though, but the OS itself is pretty innovative compared to iOS. Love the app switching by swiping in from the right. The charms bar makes sense. Swiping from above to close an app is convenient. Search is good (but improved in 8.1). Most of all it's really snappy. Of course I'm biased because I actually bought one. It's the first MS product that impressed me for a long time. I like humble, beaten down Microsoft, I can feel they're actually trying and fighting for their life this time around, and I think if people would just try it out instead of spewing the default hate for M$, they might actually like it too. I have a feeling it's too little too late though, not sure if their business model can survive this decade. If Apple came out with an Air tablet that could be used as a laptop replacement, then that would probably be it for the surface and Windows 8.

lowglow• 13 years ago

I know some people at Microsoft. They said their entire team was gifted the Surface. They were used maybe twice and then never again. That's pretty sad.

fsck--off• 13 years ago

Surface RT or Surface Pro? Were the Surfaces (or Surfactants, I'm not sure what the plural is) meant to be used in a professional capacity, or were they intended for personal use?

ihsw2• 13 years ago

That's the problem, nobody knows what it's for. You can replace a desktop with a Macbook Pro, but not a Surface Pro as was so touted.

Don't even get me started on what the Surface RT is supposed to be.

Danieru• 13 years ago

Surface RT, Personal use.

The RT was the subject of several lunch time discussions over my recent internship. I remember one dev recounting the nightmare of buying a video rental through the xbox video app I think it was. The nightmare hinged on several issues one of which being the lack of silverlight support. His surface was out of space so downloading did not work yet streaming required the not present silverlight. He had to clear out some files in the end.

Another dev used his as a picture frame. Beyond those two cases I only ever heard of the RT going unused. This despite an internal program one could use to unlock the surface. Once unlocked any developer could then recompile one of the windows binaries and generate a testing package which could be installed. In theory this means the devs could have full control of the device. In practice no one appeared to care.

Another fun fact I learned: the Apple store gives discounts on the iPad if you show them your microsoft badge while the Microsoft store does not.

olefoo• 13 years ago

Something that has been true for the past decade; inside of Microsoft are hundreds of small companies that will never get out.

As I see it almost everyone involved with the Surface ended up paying the Windows strategy tax. Microsoft should have released two separate OS's Surface for tablets and Windows 8 for the workstation market. But, they should not have done what they did; which is to create a confusing frankenstein of a UI that will drop you into the windows explorer when you were trying to open an app with your fingers.

This is a sterling example of how Ballmer's management team and the culture he has created have failed to understand both customers and markets. Too many agendas working at cross-purposes and no one who can outright say no to a bad idea coming from a powerful or connected source.

njr1232• 13 years ago

Microsoft should have released two separate OS's Surface for tablets and Windows 8 for the workstation market

This was the fatal mistake IMO, and I don't know why it doesn't get more discussion. I think Metro is a great tablet interface, and I can imagine that a Surface just running Metro with just the app store would sell pretty ok. Instead its confusingly positioned as some sort of tablet hybrid that still runs the old windows, but with a new start menu or something.

And on the flip side, you have PCs running Metro, which not only absolutely sucks to use with a mouse and keyboard, the new interface puts off corporations from upgrading because they are worried about training costs etc.

Its like thinking, 'So, Excel sells pretty well, and Word does too. Therefore we should develop a hybrid Word processor-spreadsheet application'.

Incidentally, I don't know that Ballmer is totally to blame here. I strongly suspect that Sinsofsky pushed very hard to make sure every new operating system initiative would come under his division. I think this is why Windows Phone is called Windows Phone too, even though it would probably by much much easier to market under its own brand.

yulaow6• 13 years ago

They need developers and they need to make people feel ok with the new interface before buying a tablet. So it made sense to put the same UI in windows 8 so people can try it and then feel comfortable and buy a related tablet.

Problem is: the most of the people hate metro ui, the medium user can get the difference between w8 and wRT and really a incredible small part of the total windows developers joined the ship of winRT/JS and no one of the "main" contributors

ternaryoperator• 13 years ago

It's a shame b/c the Surface Pro (not the RT) is a great device. It strikes the right balance between a tablet and a laptop. In addition, it runs all Windows apps.

I think the biggest problems (and likely the chief barriers to better sales) are the price and the short battery life when compared with other tablets.

ctdonath2• 13 years ago

In addition, it runs all Windows apps.

There are a LOT of people who just want to get away from Windows. Macs still resemble Windows PCs so people expect crossover or compatibility somehow; tablets cross a psychological barrier helping people really leave the ecosystem.

MBCook7• 13 years ago

The Surface Pro was really kind of cursed. It came out after the Surface RT, which was a confusing product that didn't meet expectations or match up well to the competition. It also became something of a poster child for Windows 8 which received a ton of negative press. Finally the decision to call them both Surface and have them be indistinguishable in hardware & interface was designed to create confusion.

dmfdmf6• 13 years ago

I see two big issues with Microsoft.

First is that they have drifted away from a basic principle that made Bill Gates a billionaire -- backwards compatibility, or at least when backwards compatibility had to be broken there was clear benefits and an upgrade or conversion path to ease the pain. Surface RT, Surface Pro, Win8, etc are just confusing choices to any customers thinking of a purchase. I'd rather just buy an iPad, quite frankly.

Secondly, Microsoft is still bitter and stinging over the old "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials. Those were epic, hilarious commercials that stuck a cord with users and that MS never countered. They should have blasted back with the truth -- yeah, Macs are cool but when you want to get real work done you use Windows. Instead they were silently stewing with resentment. Surface and the Surface marketing campaign can be summed up as MS's attempt to show the world that they are "cool" too just like Apple. But as most people know, trying to be cool is uncool and everyone laughs at the attempt. MS needs to embrace and be proud of their identity and stop trying to me-too Apple and just build products that work and run the world.

webwielder• 13 years ago

They should have blasted back with the truth -- yeah, Macs are cool but when you want to get real work done you use Windows.

You have a funny definition of truth.

dmfdmf6• 13 years ago

The reality is most businesses and 85-90% (? I don't know the latest stats off the top of my head) of computers are still running Windows.

ladzoppelin• 13 years ago

Actually the truth was -- Yea Macs don't have malware because nobody targets OSX...Yet.

harigov2• 13 years ago

Could it be that they are betting on ARM and x86 processors? Given the fast pace of technology development on ARM, if they keep sticking on to Intel, they might lag behind others in terms of what they can provide.

cubicle67• 13 years ago

Macs are cool but when you want to get real work done you use Windows

Speaking as a Mac user (who considers what he does to be real work), I think it would be more cutting to play on the games aspect of Windows. That really is the One Thing™ Windows has over other OSs

dmfdmf6• 13 years ago

That was Microsoft marketing talking, not me ;-) I use both types and they both have their strengths and weaknesses.

yulaow6• 13 years ago

I do not use a macbook but totally agree with you. And in comparision with linux it would just change in "Linux is cool but when you want to play AAA games and use our proprietary office suite you use windows"

bwang29• 13 years ago

The majority of PC users are probably cooperate users, gamers, non technical casual users, developers. Windows RT provide very small value to these people.

lucb1e• 13 years ago

"If at first you don't succeed, you're about average" comes to mind.

I personally think Windows 8 is the core of all issues. Many hate the OS, justly or not, and that causes any device with Windows 8 on it to sell a lot less units. They're actually lucky selling as many Windows 8 licenses as they have, even I got two and use neither (they forced it down my throat while buying new hardware, even though the OEM license states that there must be a license return policy, which HP just violates).

The ads for the Surface are pretty neat I think, and others I heard about it thought the same, but meanwhile nobody is buying. Apple somehow got people to use iPad as synonym for the word tablet. Microsoft really has to show an advantage over the iPad or a laptop, but so far nobody has seen any.

stickhandle• 13 years ago

Let's face it, this is the MS way. Most of the time, anyway. Office products were inferior once. Same goes for search, xbox, touch devices. MS iterates, sometimes slowly, and plays the tortoise. It doesn't always work (zune, bing), but sometimes it does (word, excel, xbox). The only caveat is the competition this time is Apple and Google. That's tougher sledding than Sony, Nintendo, Corel, Lotus, Novell et al. Then again, they've done battle with IBM, Oracle, and a different version of Apple in the past and found wins. Never write MS off on v1.

ww5202• 13 years ago

They have priced the devices way too high. Microsoft has been mostly successful before when started with low end products to build market share, got market feedback, and iterated over the years to iron out the kinks, and then moved up the chain eventually.

Apple has been in the premium product game for their whole life and know how it work. Microsoft needs to stick with their strength and avoid their weakness.

barista3• 13 years ago

They priced it competitively with the product they were fighting. But now its prices way less than iPad. iPad - $500 Surface RT - $350

ww5202• 13 years ago

IPad is already in its N-th iteration. What was Microsoft thinking that it could pitch an alpha/beta product against Apple's mature product head-to-head?

Pricing it low initially gives value to the users and they would be more forgiving of its shortcomings. It at least creates market share and momentum.

Priced it high initially and then low it is the worse marketing approach. The initial high price kills market penetration, and the subsequent price slash creates a sense of desperation and signals something is wrong with the product.

barista3• 13 years ago

iPad sales in a year were close to 7 million http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-ipad-estimat.... RT has sold close to 2 million in a year.

pedalpete3• 13 years ago

I kinda like what those numbers say, except that when the ipad was launched tablets were a new thing. People weren't sure what they would use them for, and were wary of making the purchase. Apple educated the market.

brudgers• 13 years ago

Suppose Microsoft was a pharmaceutical company. Would this be news?

Merck had nearly $7 billion in operating losses last year on $48 billion in revenue. Microsoft had $22 billion in net revenue on $78 billion in income. The write down affected profits by less than 5%.

Surface is a research project - like Kin before it. Microsoft put several million Windows RT devices in the field in less than nine months. They will probably put another several million in the field in the next few.

That's a lot of stinking data, a lot cheaper than clinical development of a new new drug, and almost certain to be repaid over the long term because they've got Windows running on ARM and while there's the normal calls for Ballmer - Microsoft's second largest stockholder after his college buddy Gates - to fire himself, there are not widespread reports of technical failure from the field. On top of all that, every device they sell recoups part of their sunk cost in R&D.

Microsoft built a reference device for a new operating system. They have collected data to help their hardware partners develop more devices. They have collected data upon which to build a roadmap for Windows on ARM. Microsoft does not live and die quarter to quarter with Wall Street because the founder and first Business Manager still hold enough stock to call the shots.

They also realized well over a billion dollars of wealth apiece last year from Microsoft's operations. Both the numbers and the standard journalistic refrain that Microsoft is failing are pretty much the same as last year and the year before etc. It's just another news cycle.

wilg• 13 years ago

Yeah, but they sure spent a lot of money and have a lot of data on a "reference device" that nobody wants to buy.

ximeng3• 13 years ago

I have a surface pro and am pretty happy with it. I compared to a lot of rival tablets and products and it was basically the only one with the combination of features I want: supports extra screen, keyboard, runs Windows / Office apps so I don't need separate device for work, 1080p, touch screen (stylus a bonus). Battery life isn't a major issue for me as I'm plugged in most of the time and it lasts more than double my previous laptop unplugged. It's price competitive with laptops of a similar specification but more flexible.

Surface RT I don't consider competitive. But the Pro is the reference device for Windows 8 and nobody was doing it as well when I looked. They should have a market position there at least.

I think Windows 8 is a bit misguided in design - it's a step backwards not being able to resize apps on a laptop resolution screen, but using it as traditional windows works fine.

sirkneeland5• 13 years ago

That's one of the perks of HAVING a lot of money.

TylerE• 13 years ago

The troubling thing is that this has become rather a pattern for MS. What's the last MS product to actually do ok in the market? Windows 7? Even that felt like a bit of an anomaly at the time.

kvb2• 13 years ago

Consumer market, or more generally speaking? They have lots of products doing very well in the market, as their billions of dollars per quarter in profit indicate. SharePoint, Dynamics, Visual Studio, ...

purplelobster4• 13 years ago

Xbox360. Went from Sony completely dominating the market with PS2 (155 million devices sold), to Xbox360 and PS3 going head to head (78 vs 78 million). And they didn't do it by leveraging Windows, Office or forcing anybody.

mzr• 13 years ago

Two months is an awfully short research project. Guess with results like the Kin, they saw the writing on the wall. Microsoft should have told Verizon they were just testing the waters.

MBCook7• 13 years ago

I seem to remember reading that, among other things, Verizon ended up pulling the rug from under Microsoft so the Kin would require $60/mo plans instead of the $10/line/mo charge that would have been more common for a teen's phone.

The Kin's desktop software was widely praised by reviewers as a great way to organize things. But when the pricing put it in iPhone range instead of feature phone range, it had no chance.

joe_the_user2• 13 years ago

Uh,

I don't think you have provided a persuasive argument (or any argument actually) for the contention that Microsoft's performance has a relation to the performance of a pharmaceutical company.

Drug development is hit-or-miss like software development. But that's about it.

Unlike drug development, software development often involves creating and maintaining a platform that will give you profits for years to come - or failing miserably and spectacularly. Microsoft's recent performance has been beyond abysmal and they've only only survived on the profits from their previous successes at building a platform - many people are still forced to use Windows. But everyone is looking around and the prospects look, uh, dim.

Sure, Microsoft doesn't live quarter to quarter. Which is why it's death is not yet finished but that's about it.

sirkneeland5• 13 years ago

"it's [sic] death is not yet finished"

They made more money in the last 3 months than any tech company on earth save for Apple and you're writing as though they are an almost dead, twitching patient in a hospice.

For a group of smart people who at least consider themselves open-minded and objective, an astonishing amount of stupidly closed-minded things are said about Microsoft.

purephase• 13 years ago

I'm not a MS fanboy by any stretch of the imagination but, and you have to realize this, MS already has that platform. They're so far ahead with said platform that all of this is just play money to them and they have ample time to invest heavily into R&D.

No other platform is even remotely ready for corporate environment. Not by a long shot. The billions invested in Windows software by every company on the planet means incredible vendor lock and the momentum required to move past that is so immense that is just not possible.

Any possibility of their "death" is ridiculous. This is just a slight bump in the road for them, they'll shift strategy and lather, rinse, repeat.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

The problem is that MS's profitability is based on products which, while still extremely useful and popular, are clearly obsolete in the long term, and they have shown no ability to move beyond them.

MS is in fine shape for a decade or two to come, if not more. But an MS that's still based on Office in 2030 will be irrelevant, no matter how profitable. And they can't milk that forever.

sirkneeland5• 13 years ago

I'd say the same for an Apple still making iPods and iPhones in 2030.

17 years is such a distant time in the future as to be meaningless for short-term tech prognostication.

crazygringo• 13 years ago

My simple, genuine question is: how did this happen?

I mean, Microsoft has huge resources, and presumably does testing with focus groups, etc. They must test these devices with potential consumers, and it's not rocket science to do some sampling to determine how many units will sell, to get a very rough ballpark figure.

How could Microsoft mis-estimate the market on a scale of this magnitude? This isn't just a random extra camera or cellphone model that maybe doesn't sell so well. I honestly don't understand how a company this large, could get it this wrong.

tjdetwiler• 13 years ago

Hubris

jasonkolb• 13 years ago

Well, its CEO refuses to even let rival products in his home, for starters. Talk about a well-insulated bubble, that's a great way to lose touch with customers.

azakai• 13 years ago

Wasn't that Gates, not Ballmer?

yulaow6• 13 years ago

as i said below, in my opinion, ballmer bet to much on the "we have office and you need it" part.

Also he was totally confident of success of windows 8, and with that success it was confident in the metro ui and then in the ease of switching to a rt tablet.

If you see these as a chain of events, the conclusion is really simple.

randomfool• 13 years ago

It was less about Office than Windows getting 400m installs and becoming a platform that devs would be dumb to ignore.

The logic was: - Windows automatically gets a shitload of installs a year (from new PC sales) - Devs will flock to the platform because of the install numbers - Users will buy Win8 tablets because of vibrant app ecosystem.

The issue is that despite the revamped start screen, win8 has not led to massive demand for modern apps. So they've stalled on step 2.

Make no mistake though, Win8 is still being sold on a lot of machines. At some point the majority of PCs will have access to the Windows store.

mikeash3• 13 years ago

I'm sure they did all of these things. The only place I can reasonably see it breaking down is in the reaction of upper management. All the advance planning in the world won't save you if the CEO insists that the product will be a hit even when your focus groups indicate that it will be a flop. I can only imagine that's what happened.

joe_the_user2• 13 years ago

The entire Windows 8 roll-out was a palpably desperate effort to leverage Microsoft's existing desktop monopoly to gain a hold on what was/is seen as "the future of computing" tablets and phones.

Microsoft did very badly. But this kind of thing is hard to do and is not a one product or an incremental-product-improvements affair.

When Microsoft was fighting for it desktop monopoly, it did a good job of leveraging it's strengths to produce products that were "bad" by many measures but which satisfied a lot of user requirements and offered the end user good value. Surface is a logical product in this long lineage (and in answer to the parent's question, you can't create a Frankenstein product like Surface with focus group because Surface had to be a "quantum leap", an ad-hoc product of bucket chemistry). The problem is that apparently either the tablet market is not fluid enough that a product can win by just being a bucket of feature or Google already muscled into the feature-side and Microsoft isn't getting that part.

And equally, until now, Microsoft didn't actually sh-t all over their basic UI. But the approach of removing the start button subtracted more existing users than "Metro" could hope to gain.

You could frame this affair by saying that not only did MS' greed not abate over the years, it grew large enough to strangle the beast. Couldn't have happened to nicer people.

yulaow6• 13 years ago

Also when microsot was fighting for desktop it made one wonderful thing: brought in the platform a shitload of developers ("... developers, developers!"). That was the main advantage and that is why they succeed (if we ignore the "forced monopoly" part).

But now with windows 8 and metro ui with winRT(/JS) it seems the problem is mainly that, simply, the are not developers who want to join the ship. I personally do not know any company or indipendent developer who is betting himself in it or even just exploring it. Anyone! And, infact, if you look at the win8 market (that is also the RT market and only way to get apps for that os) is almost empty or, if you want to see it differently, full of crap-copy-useless-apps.

At least with windows phone 8 the situation is a bit different, but here who we have to thank? Microsoft or Nokia? I bet in the second one.

wvenable• 13 years ago

Microsoft isn't really leveraging their existing desktop monopoly; if they were doing that they might have had a chance. Instead they competing with Apple and Google on their competitors terms. They created an entirely new locked down API and a store; that isn't leveraging anything.

When Windows-on-ARM was demoed running full Windows 7 with all the fixings I was really interested. But then they crippled it.

There isn't anything wrong with Metro. Having a single OS across every platform is good too. But sacrificing the desktop for WinRT/Metro is the opposite of leveraging their monopoly.

If I was in charge of Microsoft, I'd put the Windows 7 start menu back in Win8. I'd make it so metro applications (and settings) could run windowed in the desktop. I'd focus on simplifying the desktop experience to make it more metro-like without forcing people to switch modes. Windows RT would run all ARM Win32 apps unrestricted.

Tloewald7• 13 years ago

Microsoft has always relied on "you have no choice" as its major marketing tool. (X-Box is the big exception.) This is the price of relying on it in a world where it turns out people do have a choice.

Remember how awful Vista was? How did needing to confirm your WiFi password ever get through any kind of review process?

kvb2• 13 years ago

There were plenty of things that doomed Surface RT's initial rollout to failure. It may have done well with focus groups, and I'm not convinced that it was an objectively poor product to the extent that it was guaranteed to fail. But right off the bat they had poor marketing combined with poor distribution (Surfaces were only available online or in Microsoft stores, of which there aren't very many, so very few people could try before buying). Even once they started allowing Surfaces to be sold through other physical retailers, they did a poor job training salespeople and getting attractive placement in stores. And the RT is also just a hard product to sell - there are lots of aspects that are really nice, but it's lacking a simple elevator pitch.

purplelobster4• 13 years ago

I'll add to that. I tried very hard to buy a Surface Pro from their online store. It was literally impossible. They did not allow me to give them money, no matter how much I tried. They had separate systems for everything (the online store, the physical store had different systems and databases), needed a live login to make a purchase (why?!), didn't accept any of my cards with the helpful error message "error: 0". When on the phone with them it took over an hour to order it. I had to be a very persistent customer in order to finally get one. So far I'm very satisfied with it, the Wacom pen and it being a laptop/tablet replacement are the killer features for me. But after dealing with their online store and phone support, and add to that their image problems with the public, and I'm not surprised it's not selling well.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

I think it's classic "if you ask horse & buggy owners what they want, it's a faster horse" type thinking. People say they want "real windows" on a 10" screen, or at least some group of people say that. But that's not what they want.

I'm pretty much Microsoft's target demographic with Surface: I use Office all day at work, and often need to work on the go because things pop up. I might say I want Windows on a tablet, but that's not really what I want. I want perfect office document compatibility, so I can review markups and changes on the go. I want to be able to log into my company's domain and browse my company's DMS. But that's what I really want, even if I say I want Windows on a tablet. I don't really mean I want full-blown Windows with its mouse-and-keyboard centric UI on a tablet...

btown• 13 years ago

The sad thing is that I know that there are brilliant enough people at Microsoft to ask the right questions, to drill down in their focus groups and figure out that the horse & buggy owners could actually really use a buggy, not just a faster horse. As startup people, we try to do this every single time we talk to someone! But somehow the institution doesn't allow those people to ask the right questions and act upon the answers - rather, it seems to encourage the short-sighted, iterative questions that would lead to the "faster horse," or in this case a whole bunch of tiny features that miss the big picture.

cabalamat• 13 years ago

My simple, genuine question is: how did this happen? I mean, Microsoft has huge resources, and presumably does testing with focus groups, etc.

I'm sure they do, and I'm sure they focus-grouped the tablets extensively.

But it's very hard to convince someone of something that they really, really don't want to be true. There's a Dilbert cartoon (http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-11-06/) where the Ugly Truth is that there's nothing Microsoft can do to stop its decline into irrelevance and that producing a tablet is their attempt to hide that truth from themselves.

And maybe Microsoft's internal culture makes it hard for underlings to tell their bosses bad news, so any bad news gets a layer of amelioration and obfuscation for every layer of management.

Put all that together and its easy to see how a big failure could happen.

mark-r2• 13 years ago

Re: "a layer of amelioration and obfuscation for every layer of management":

http://ogun.stanford.edu/~bnayfeh/plan.html

HashThis• 13 years ago

Yikes. They better turn this around quickly, or they may no longer be the country's best technology company.

bhauer2• 13 years ago

I use my Surface Pro nearly every day, so this sort of report makes me feel that:

a. I am an oddball (probably true).

b. Microsoft's marketing for the Surface sucks (generally accepted as objectively true).

c. The Surface was a weak attempt (A subjective matter. I like mine, but there is lot of room for improvement. Ask me if you want more details).

The pundits have said their pieces, and I have written my own thoughts/rant about Microsoft's current unenviable situation [1]. But as a user of a Surface Pro, I'll offer up some of my random thoughts here as well.

Hardware-wise, the Surface Pro is one generation too early; it needs a Haswell CPU in order to provide user-friendly battery life and perhaps shed some weight. To meet their launch timing objectives, Microsoft had no choice but to use Ivy Bridge. As it was, the Pro was disturbingly late to market compared to the RT. The RT's flailing in the market muted the thunder of the Pro release. The market's response to the lackluster RT had already set in, casting a long shadow over the Pro. When the Pro finally arrived, less technically-savvy consumers were already disinterested. Even us tech folks were lukewarm despite the Pro being quite nice even if you use it as merely an ultrabook.

If Surface 2 is entirely Haswell (that is, both entry-level and Pro-level are low-TDP x86), and nothing else changes, I think the hardware will be just shy of superb. As it is, the Surface Pro packs ultrabook performance in a tablet-like form factor. Browsing the web, writing code, working with e-mails, Twitter, IM, IRC, the works--it's all as fast and smooth as the workstation I have at the office (a first-generation i7). It makes conventional tablets seem alarmingly slow and limited.

On the other hand, because the Pro is heavy and encumbered by a hungry CPU, it's not as versatile as conventional tablets.

I think it is now evident to most that Windows RT should be unshackled. Microsoft was apparently worried about cannibalism, but that worry is overshadowed by an utter dearth of sales. Microsoft should strongly shun their baked-in culture of capriciously angering consumers. They know arbitrary software limitations will upset consumers but they do it anyway. Stop that.

Personally, my computing lifestyle is not especially amenable to "computing device addition," and yet I half-reluctantly acquired a Surface Pro because I wanted portable computing capability and had never owned a high-end laptop. My tablets left me wanting more, but laptops never quite fit my desires (too large, too low-DPI). Plus, I am a bit of a Microsoft fanboy, I'll admit it.

Rather than adding another computing device, I would prefer a model where all my applications run on a compute server I own and operate (my workstation at home would suffice), and all of my devices connect to views of those applications. Adding a Surface Pro gives me yet another first-class computing device to manage. So now I have all of the following devices in my life wanting me to manage applications, manage data, manage configuration, manage presence, manage and synchronize state: my home workstation, my office workstation, my media PC, my phone, my Surface Pro, and my other tablets.

It's frustrating to add another device to the pile with no change to the underlying model of working with devices. I feel Microsoft is fairly uniquely positioned to present a unified computing model to users that Google and Apple seem reluctant to provide due to cloud stickiness (that is, a desire to solve application continuity and data continuity by moving applications to their public cloud rather than user-owned/managed applications). Microsoft is chasing the Google and Apple model and so far they are failing. As a Surface Pro owner, and Windows user on my workstation, I'd like to see Microsoft change course to provide a unified computing model focused on my devices working in a master-slave configuration over (tunneled) private networks.

Frankly, I want my Surface Pro to be a touch and keyboard-enabled, high-DPI, remote terminal to responsive (in the web-app sense of the word) application instances running on my workstation. That way, it's not a first-class computing device with all of the encumbering nags that entails. I want a subservient tablet that is just one view, one set of input and output devices, for my singular computing.

Finally, as I included in the linked rant, I believe a massive problem for Microsoft is the insanity of MSDN pricing. I strongly believe that their pricing model is actively hostile to developers, especially in this time of indie-oriented application development. They may have all sorts of special business programs that provide exceptions to the standard pricing--I honestly don't know--but the standard pricing stares you in the face and says, "Go away, Windows development is not for you." That sucks.

[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft

pedalpete3• 13 years ago

I agree with what you said, but don't you feel that ubuntu is stepping in and providing the experience you want? One device that runs everything? I'd like to see a mobile device which can attach to an external CPU when I'm at my desktop, but aside from that, most arm chips are powerful enough for phone or tablet use.

bhauer2• 13 years ago

That is very close indeed. If a mobile device could augment its CPU capacity when docked, that would indeed be close to the model I seek assuming you always have your device with you (and you probably do). It may ultimately be the way things go, but if my say mattered, I'd steer in a slightly different direction.

I would prefer that the computing device on my network be a hard-wired, always-on, high-bandwidth, high-compute, high-storage device (a workstation in our contemporary lingo). I want my personal applications to act as my agent when I am not present, possibly doing non-trivial computation and serving on my behalf. I want my data to be shared and federated with friends/family/colleagues on my terms, from my network or a network of trusted peers.

I find it a little awkward to attempt to shoehorn all of that into a mobile device when I'd be just as happy--more happy in fact--for the compute power to be hard-wired and the mobile device to be just an input/output terminal to that compute power.

As a final matter, I'd feel a little more confident with the physical security of my compute engine and data if it were in my house rather than on my person.

But yes, kudos to Ubuntu for concertedly attacking our present-day malaise of multiple first-class devices!

Tloewald7• 13 years ago

I don't own a Surface Pro but I was at one stage determined to buy one, until I tried several out in different stores. The keyboard covers are both _awful_. This isn't a generation too early, it's just horribly bad.

So having designed the device around a crappy keyboard cover, Microsoft painted itself into a corner. Is it a usable laptop replacement? No, it's not. So, how is it as a tablet? Well, no apps to speak of, heavy, and crappy battery life.

I agree about using a tablet as a remote access point for a desktop computer (or whatever). The iPad makes sense for that too (and third party tools make it quite functional in a pinch). A really well-thought-out implementation of this idea would be wonderful (and I hope Apple does this too).

atourgates• 13 years ago

I'm glad to hear someone else address this, so I don't feel like a crazy person.

I really liked the idea of the touch keypad, and as I write things for a living, I thought it might be a reason for me to get a surface.

I tried one at BestBuy, and it was so awful I assumed it was broken. Then I went to a MSFT store and tried 4 before I realized it was broken, but at a much deeper level than I had initially assumed.

The Type cover is usable, bit feels oh so cheap and breakable, out of character for the rest of the device's quite high build quality.

So you're stick with a keyboard that's broken by design, or one that feels like it will break at any second.

If they made a usable touch keypad, I'd buy a Surface.

gillianseed• 13 years ago

I can see what Microsoft was going for with Surface Pro, and to some extent why the product was seemingly 'rushed'.

They (Microsoft) realize what Apple and Google has obviously also realized, that in the 'future' we will likely 'all' be using a tablet style device which functions very much the way it does now when we are 'mobile', but also doubles as a work station by connecting it to a desktop screen and mouse/keyboard.

And when the dedicated desktop/laptop machine finally fades away into obscurity, Microsoft must atleast have positioned itself as one of the major competitors amongst the devices which will replace it.

Currently Apple and Android tablets are marketed and vastly used as devices purely for consuming content, so Microsoft see an opportunity to market itself as the pro-tablet, the one you can get work done with.

And this what the Surface Pro is supposed to be, and it makes sense from a marketing point as it can leverage the one big advantage Microsoft has over Apple and Google, the huge amount of professional/production software which exists for the Windows platform.

However the big blunder I see with Surface Pro is the pricing, if priced similarly I'd say 9.9 out of 10 people today will choose something like a macbook air over a Surface Pro any day of the week, because people know laptops, they know what they are getting, they will not be betting on a Tablet on which to do their work when they can get the safe option (laptop) for the same'ish money.

So what Microsoft should have done in my opinion, is to sell Surface Pro at cost in order to sway the laptop customers, heck even at a loss, this is about positioning themselves for the post-dedicated-desktop/laptop world which by all accounts is approaching rapidly.

Instead they waste 900 million on Surface RT which is a product I can't understand at all.

That said, as someone who is no fan of Microsoft products and in particular their desktop monopoly I'm not that sad to see them stumble as they do, but I still find it quite baffling.

Gormo4• 13 years ago

I think it is now evident to most that Windows RT should be unshackled.

Unshackled? What's the point of keeping it around at all? It was an attempted ARM OS (that shouldn't rightly be called "Windows"), but now that x86 architectures are poised to compete with ARM in power-efficiency, what's the point of having an ARM OS on a Microsoft product?

MS should be very, very wary about moving away from x86 platforms and the traditional Windows platform. They're an underdog in the mobile space right now, and even the slightest amount of friction for developers in getting their applications working on Microsoft's mobile offerings could lead them to prioritize other mobile platforms.

MS should be working diligently to defend the market position of x86 and to build comparatively open platforms that maintain continuity with their established markets, and which are attractive to hardware OEMs and to application developers. Instead, they're dabbling with strategies that will cause their competitors' dominance in other markets to backwash into their bread-and-butter business.

They need to kill Surface RT entirely, immediately abandon any ARM-based projects they've got going, repair their relationships with OEMs (treating the Surface Pro as a first-generation reference design, and droping their own attempts to sell hardware), build good APIs and tools for adding mobile UIs onto existing x86 Windows applications, and make no attempt to assert Apple-like direct control over the software distribution channel.

yuhong• 13 years ago

I think even Thurrott don't recommend the Surface RT: http://winsupersite.com/windows-rt/surface-rt-350-time-buy

kylebgorman• 13 years ago

I know just where to put all those extra Surfaces nobody wants:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_video_game_burial

milhous• 13 years ago

I'm in the Apple camp, but I think the crazy rumor that Surface was going to go on sale for $199 disappointed a lot of people. Definitely would've bought one at that price. Heck, I would've stood in line at a Microsoft store on launch day.

damian2000• 13 years ago

MS should consider going back to being just a software company, as IBM did when they sold off their PC division to Lenovo. Their key strength is still their business software and desktop/server OS (Windows).

kabdib• 13 years ago

The RT was doomed when the priced it too high, by about a hundred dollars.

I've heard this was because the COGs were quite high, because Apple had a bunch of the components market sewn up.

I think the base model RT might have had a chance at $350.

pqdbr• 13 years ago

I'm amazed by reading all these comments that nobody touched on the lacking 3G issue.

Last time I checked, Surface was supposed to be a tablet, to compete with iPad and all.

What were they thinking when they released it without offering a 3G option, even at a premium price ?

jonaford4• 13 years ago

Great point. This was the actual reason I didn't buy a surface.

throwawaykf02• 13 years ago

Wait, so assuming any reasonable ratio of Surface to Surface Pro sales, they still sold more than a million devices? That's... more than I expected.

Still far short of the "few million" they expected to sell, but a million seems respectable for the first year of a late entry in a hypercompetitive market, no?

jonaford4• 13 years ago

If they had simply targeted RT at corporates and Pro at consumers this would have all turned out very differently.

geuis• 13 years ago

Took the Xbox years to be profitable. Microsoft is turning in a new direction and its going to take a while before they get onto their new course.

http://septemberlove.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/turning-...

Big ships don't turn on a dime.

corporalagumbo• 13 years ago

fondleslabs

Ugh, I HATE this word. Why do people use it? To make themselves feel clever and superior?

skc• 13 years ago

I think they'll be alright in the end, Microsoft tends to iterate their products in the classic if infuriating way.

I expect v2 to be good and v3 to be pretty stellar. The question is time.

Off topic, does anyone have Chromebook Pixel sales figures yet?

Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hideous

Related Stories