Microsoft's Surface Caught Windows OEMs By Surprise

MojoKid writes "Microsoft's Surface isn't just an attempt to take on the iPad or an articulation of MS's independent design philosophy — it's a fundamental threat against the OEMs who've spent decades as Microsoft's partners and collectively destroyed the industry's perception of the PC as a high-value product. The adversarial roots run deep. Microsoft didn't tell its partners about Surface until three days before the event and gave only the most minimal details on the product. Only the largest vendors even got a phone call; Asus and Acer, the 4th and 5th largest PC manufacturers worldwide, have stated that they had no idea anything was coming. For OEMs who have spent decades working in lock-step with Redmond, that's deeply unsettling."

Comments

Re:Apple

[SuricouRaven]

Apple is antitrust-proof because they don't control upwards of ninety percent of a market like MS do with desktop OSs. The biggest concern of antitrust is using market dominance in one area to forcibly dominate in another - the textbook (literally, used in textbooks) example being Microsoft using their dominance of desktop OSs to promote their web browser so effectively they they all but destroyed any competition. The iPhone may be the single most popular smartphone, but it still makes up less than half of smartphones in use - and if they don't have a dominant position, they can't be accused of abusing it.

Re:Lockstep, my ass

[hey_popey]

On the rare occasion I bow down to necessity and buy a laptop, the first thing I do is buy a new license to Windows, wipe the thing, and start fresh.

I am surprised by this part: last time I tried with a Win7 Pro laptop, I was able to use my own license number (the one on the sticker on the laptop case) with another Windows setup disc, without having to purchase a new license!

Re:*** Announcement project***

[UnknowingFool]

Innovating? I think many of the partners are just now getting over the royal screwing they got with the Vista.

Vista was late. MS changed things constantly and at the last minute. One change that hurt the OEMs was the whole Vista Compatible/Ready fiasco where MS included Intel graphics as Vista acceptable very late when they told OEMs that it would not be. HP was thoroughly pissed as they had planned their hardware around this. To put into context why this screwed over HP, let's delve into it. In planning for Vista which would not include Intel graphics at the time (915 chipset I think), HP would have to order the more expensive 945 from Intel or go with discrete. That would be more expensive but HP had planned for that maybe a year in advance. All the sudden, MS changes direction and allows it but only as "Vista Ready" meaning it couldn't run Aero. That meant all the low cost OEMs suddenly could put out "Vista" PCs at a lower cost even though they could only run the basic version. That didn't matter to these OEMs as long as they got sales.

Re:Don't Need the Help

[ozmanjusri]

http://source.android.com/

Welcome to Android

Here you can find the information and source code you need to build an Android-compatible device.

Android is an open-source software stack for mobile devices, and a corresponding open-source project led by Google. We created Android in response to our own experiences launching mobile apps. We wanted to make sure that there was no central point of failure, so that no industry player can restrict or control the innovations of any other. That's why we created Android, and made its source code open.