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Microsoft Surface Struggles to Ship A Million Units
zacharye writes "While some see potential in Microsoft's Surface tablet, most industry watchers appear to have written off the device at this point. Orders were reportedly cut in half following a slow launch, and Microsoft's debut slate has been hammered time and time again by reviewers and analysts. The latest to pile on is Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, which estimates that when all is said and done, Microsoft will have sold fewer than 1 million Surface tablets in the slate's debut quarter."
Still better than 25,000.
With the surface pro's battery life at an estimated 4 hours. We can expect that to fail as well.
I think the actual biggest reason for this is people who wanted a tablet already got a different product from Samsung or Motorola or Apple and they're not going to spend all that money again just to switch. MS came into the game WAY too late.
Also we're at the verge of a netbook-caliber tablet crash where everyone realizes they all suck and stop buying them. They're too fragile, they don't have a DVD drive, they're harder to type on, the screen is tiny, they get dirty with fingerprints, they don't run 99% of software ever written, everything they do on it is designed to cost money, the browsers don't display pages correctly, the battery life is a lie, most don't have USB flash drive capabilities, they don't work with the majority of printers, and it's difficult to do meaningful work on them in any way shape or form. That's actually slightly more cons than netbooks and they went from boom to flop in approximately 2 years.
Microsoft has no clue what users actually want, film at 11.
When is Microsoft going to learn to make a truly consumer-oriented device other than the XBox? Not with support for Office (that takes up most of your space apparently), not with support for Outlook, but to do the things people are using other tablets for.
Every time they release a product, the marketing is so heavily geared to Office/Outlook/Exchange I have to wonder if Microsoft is aware of the fact that loads of people use computers for things that don't involve their business applications.
If your marketing is focused on how I can do spreadsheets and connect to my corporate Exchange server, then you have no idea of what it is I'd be looking to use this kind of device for. Because I don't want either of those features.
It just always seems Microsoft is so focused on their business tools, that the result is too much focus on that. And it always seems like they launch a product after someone else has been successful with it, and then miss some of the attributes of the other product which make it successful in the first place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
The fact that after so many years of backwards-compatible Windows versions they launched their first tablet device with a desktop environment that wouldn't run anything other than Office was a huge "wtf" to me. So now in the first few months of it's life Microsoft have polluted the Surface brand as the little tablet that couldn't. I thought the Pro might still stand a chance in the face of this until I read the 64Gb edition would cost $900 and have a 4hr battery life. Ultrabooks, despite being slightly larger, seem to be much more capable for the same price. I don't know what Microsoft was thinking. They p'd off their hardware partners to launch this?
I am one of the holdouts for the Pro but I did get my hands on the ARM version a few weeks ago at the only bloody MS Surface booth in Ontario. In the 5min I was holding it I managed to find everything I was looking for and didn't have any hiccups in responsiveness or performance. It is a shame that they are so late to the game but I don't think windows vista/7 would have worked as well in a tablet situation.
/not a shill, I just like MS hardware
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Who cares?
The only review that matters in the end is what the market thinks. The market doesn't seem to be buying. Saying "the professional reviewers liked it!" is loser talk.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
That's what they did with the Xbox division nearly a decade ago, and the division is still years from paying back the investment.
Even Microsoft can't afford to float vast sums of money to buy market share forever, and what's more I doubt the investors will tolerate pissing billions away.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Anyone looking at Microsoft mobile solutions as a consumer product is looking at them wrong. These toys are meant to keep Microsoft relevant in the mobile business space. Write once, run Microsoft. Businesses don't need to hire ancillary dev teams to write their ancillary mobile apps they can utilize in-house talent and existing code bases. Even LOBs are going to be able to spill over into the mobile space since they won't be shackled to orange shield implementations that scare the CSOs. If businesses adopt Microsoft mobiles the hope is that consumers--used to their work devices--will find the familiarity attractive enough to stick with the brand.
Time will tell if the strategy pays off. The ability to use C#/XAML and avoid the costs and penalties of HTML5/JavaScript is a very attractive proposition for businesses.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
for a site with highly libertarian users who are all about personal privacy and internet freedom, it's weird how often you see slashdotters ripping on anonymous users *only* because they're posting anonymously.
- ac, lol
You have obviously not used Windows lately, or any other Microsoft product if you say such abjectly ignorant things. You may laugh, but those of us who have to support Microsoft products know the truth, and how wrong you are. Microsoft-level quality products are indeed expensive, and for good reason too, do you have any idea how much it costs to support this crap? How hard it is to keep up and running? Clean it up after the latest security breach? Preventing breaches is a fools errand, give it up.
All this costs money, lots and lots of money. Initial purchase price may be low compared to everything but FOSS, but that is only the beginning. If you calculate TCO, you will see exactly how expensive this poorly coded pile of outdated security holes really is. It ain't cheap.
-Charlie
[Yes, this may look like sarcasm, but sadly it is not]
That's not the party line, citizen.
Actually; it seems to be pretty much the party line. Every time we get any discussion of the various Windows 8 components someone pipes up and says "have you tried it", "if you saw the real thing" etc. etc. Every analyst house has completely overestimated the success of Windows phone 7 and Windows 8 in every way. In the same time when Tommi Ahonen was able to give accurate Windows Phone market share forecasts. Have a look at a almost any review; They say "it's great but the price is too high"
Look at the difference between an Android tablet priced for $300 and an Android for $600. One of them is a great value device with real compromises to bring it down to price and the other is a really great no questions device. You can't write a review which says "it's great but it's only worth half it's price". What you mean is "it's crap for the price and they should cut the price to a level where it's worth the money". The entire media is running scared of naming the pile of garbage that is Surface. Have a look at how carefully they never criticize the low resolution of surface; They always prefix with some Microsoft marketing statement; for example extreme tech writes:
etc. etc.
Try to find one of the mainstream reviews which mentions that the surfaces resolution, at 148 PPI, is worse than almost any modern tablet. As a point of reference; the iPad has 264 PPI, the Nexus 7 has 216 PPI and the iPad mini has 163 PPI. The Google Nexus 10 with a 300 PPI screen is a completely different league. With a screen like that the correct price for a Surface is in fact around $250. You would have to go back to the very original iPad screen to find an Apple product with a lower resolution screen. The same thing repeats with mention of the terrible user interface experience - always gently skipped over or we are told "you can get used to it fast". Again with the app store, almost every review completely ignores the quality of the apps ported from iOS.
Have a look on any site with "consumer reviews". You will probably find more positive reviews than there are people outside Microsoft with tablets, and any review which reads as if someone actually used the product will be voted down out of visibility.
I think that the great thing is that consumers have finally realised that there is a Microsoft party line; have realised that that line is everywhere and that they are choosing to ignore it.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Apparently they have the monopoly on stuff we don't want any more.
Help stamp out iliturcy.