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Microsoft: Surface Tablet May Alienate OEM Partners

Posted by Soulskill on from the damn-the-torpedoes dept.

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."

13 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by RudyHartmann · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only the Surface, but the Xbox can be a full blown PC with an interface just like Win8. What about the Microsoft Store? Sounds like the Apple store doesn't it? Just wait till Microsoft comes out with their own phone. This is another reason OEM's and deveopers are giving Linux another serious look. There is no viable alternative for them.

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    1. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by masternerdguy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Linux has already won. It has won the server and the mobile market.

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    2. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by RudyHartmann · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Linux has already won. It has won the server and the mobile market.

      I agree with you in a way. But a full blown win will be when you can ask any guy on the street what Linux is and get an answer..

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    3. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by jhoegl · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Like when you ask "what version of windows are you using?".
      I mean, that answer is brilliant!

    4. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by jedidiah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      What a pathetic little Microsoft shill you are.

      OEMs have done a great job of making appealing hardware for Windows. That's the only reason Windows even exists today. Otherwise MS-DOS would just be some obscure thing from the 80's that you never heard about.

      Tablets are a sticky wicket because consumer price points require using a microprocessor architecture that Windows doesn't support. Even if you do port Windows to ARM, you will have nothing to run on it.

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    5. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by sexconker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Linux has already won. It has won the server and the mobile market.

      I agree with you in a way. But a full blown win will be when you can ask any guy on the street what Linux is and get an answer..

      You can't ask any guy on the street what electricity is and get an answer.

    6. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by 0123456 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Until they buy Office and say "Why the fuck won't this just work?"

      How many consumers buy Office? And why would they when LibreOffice comes with their Linux install?

    7. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by 0123456 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If OEMs can't bundle crapware to offset the price of Windows, either Windows systems cost more or Microsoft will have to cut the cost of Windows to the OEMs.

    8. Re:They're Concluding Microsoft Wants to Be Apple by aztektum · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just wait till Microsoft comes out with their own phone.

      They pretty much are. They've effectively turned Nokia into their "Windows Phone division".

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  2. Re:Of course it will... by bloodhawk · · Score: 1, Insightful

    It is about time, so far the oem's have failed misserably for MS. Perhaps this will spur them on to come up with some unique and innovative designs, it seems at the moment the only one that even tries is ASUS.

  3. OEMs key to Microsoft success story by aNonnyMouseCowered · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Failed? OEMs were the key to Microsoft's success! Much more than developers, developers, developers. That's why Microsoft was a bigger company than Apple for most of its history. For OEMs Microsoft was a benevolent dictator. Now Microsoft is a desperate despot willing to sacrifice its allies just to maintain its position as an influential tech company.

    1. Re:OEMs key to Microsoft success story by Desler · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yes. Have you not seen the long sting of crappy tablets coming from the OEMs the past decade?

  4. doing what MS does best by pbjones · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It'll be second rate and fail. It's not because MS is bad at this sort of thing, it's because it can't concentrate of the user, and UI consistency, it doesn't need to be distracted by hardware design. There are still stupid differences in the way the parts of the Office suit work, and the UI should work the same way. An MS made tablet will be second rate because it isn't new, it isn't wanted. Just supply the software and let people who know how to build hardware do their job, MS has been doing it this way from the beginning, why change now?

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