Microsoft: Surface Tablet May Alienate OEM Partners

HangingChad sends this excerpt from PCMag: "Microsoft this week admitted that its upcoming Surface tablet might hurt its relationships with PC maker partners. As first noted by the New York Times, Redmond said in a Thursday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that 'our Surface devices will compete with products made by our OEM partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.'" The filing also made note of the difficulties in building up another app marketplace: "In order to compete, we must successfully enlist developers to write applications for our marketplace and ensure that these applications have high quality, customer appeal and value. Efforts to compete with these application marketplaces may increase our cost of revenue and lower our operating margins."

Comments

Really?

[geoffrobinson]

You have to mention everything that could be a potential threat to your business in SEC filings. Not particularly interesting since this is "may do this, may do that."

Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple

[jedidiah]

Consumers can run Linux and not even be aware of it.

It's step onto this side of the 90s timewarp you appear to be posting from.

Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple

[RudyHartmann]

I just read this article on Forbes. It looks like they've come to the same conclusion I have.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/06/21/microsoft-first-branded-tablets-next-their-own-cell-phone/