Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Is Sitting On Six Million Unsold Surface Tablets
DavidGilbert99 writes "Microsoft took everyone by surprise last year with the Surface tablet. It was something completely new from the company everyone knew as a software company. However nine months later and the sheen has worn off the Surface tablet and Microsoft's financial results on Thursday revealed it has taken a $900 million write down on the Surface RT tablets, leading David Gilbert in IBTimes to estimate it is sitting on a stockpile of six million unsold tablets."
I think i know an area in New Mexico where they can bury them. With good electronic company.
-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+ *** http://www.mountainfort.com *** +-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-=-+-
With those cool commercials showing people spinning these around, and snapping keyboards onto them with such gusto. Certainly the choreography should have guaranteed these things get snapped up in masses.
It can't be that people are finally paying attention, and ignoring fluff. So what gives?
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Microsoft took everyone by surprise last year with the Surface tablet. It was something completely new from the company everyone knew as a software company
Seriously?
It took you by surprise that they too finally released a tablet? Perhaps it was surprising it ran on a version of their own OS?
From a company that's been selling game consoles, keyboards, mice and other hardware for years?
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Then I'll buy one, I could do with a tablet to run Fedora :)
Surprised they didn't consider force feeding the corporate accounts with Surface crap as they do with the other of their crap.
Microsoft Surface RT = Tegra 3
Microsoft Kin = Tegra APX 2600
In last month's news, Microsoft Surface tablets to shift from Tegra chips to Qualcomm. I'm sure NVIDIA is cheering that their main competitor Qualcomm gets to work on the next cutting edge lame duck product from Microsoft.
Everyone got their chance to see Win 8 in action and saw what a pile of crap that was. Why would they buy it on a tablet?
Microsoft had already tried and failed to sell tablet computing for about a decade before Apple showed them how to do it right. Their response was to double down with yet another attempt to shoehorn windows into a role it never fit.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Microsoft Is Sitting On Six Million Unsold Surface Tablets
I guess Balmer threw all the chairs out.
Sounds like 900 million more reasons to get rid of Ballmer...
... for $50 each, I'll buy two!
Hrm, can it run WebOS^H^H^H^H^HCyanogenmod?
First Apple released the iPod. MS follows this with the Zune, receiving limited enthusiasm from the community.
Next Apple released the iPhone. MS follows this with the Windows Phone. The community responds with even less enthusiasm.
Then Apple released the iPad. MS follows (of course!) with the Surface. The community responds with complete and utter apathy.
Smart move. They are sure to go up in value over time. Like Furbies.
I can think of few topics in which linking to this sketch comedy video from last year is more appropriate.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
Can't wait for these to be sold off dirt cheap, even if they're mostly worthless before being rooted. Cheap tablets are awesome for home servers.
15 years ago it was common to question whether Apple could survive in the face of the Windows monopoly. Heck, the joke was that their official name was "Beleaguered Apple Computer," because it seemed like every news article referred to them that way. Then they had a string of hits: the iMac, OS X, the iPod, the iTunes Store, the iPhone, the MacBook Air, and the iPad. Microsoft seems to be totally on the defensive, with flops like the Zune and PlaysForSure and now Surface tablets. They are hanging on in the enterprise, and I suppose the Xbox might be making them some money after billions were invested, but that's about it. A year or so ago Apple began making more money from the iPhone alone than Microsoft makes from everything they do put together. Microsoft seems like yesterday's news. How the mighty have fallen.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
I've never been a fan of Microsoft's business practices, or the Windows platform. But I like Office, particularly Word. Always have, going back to Word for Mac 6. Please don't tell me to write in emacs and process through LaTeX. I've done it and know that nobody but a few physics journals is going to accept a .tex file. Also, it's a PITA when it comes to formatting. And no, I don't want a wysiwyg TeX editor either.
Anyway, I was intrigued by the possibility of running Word on a tablet and went to a store to check one of these Surface Tablets out. I liked it. The keyboard is responsive, the browser good enough to use, and a beta of Office looked useful. But the price tag and lack of apps is a killer. I just couldn't justify it.
So, like many of their manufactured goods, MS has but out a decent product only to be hampered by a truly idiotic marketing and sales plan. It's like they thought they'd sell these overpriced things on brand recognition alone, forgetting that people actually need to use the thing for something before they'll plunk cash down. Including Office was a good first step. But it's not an app market.
Jeesh. The decline of Microsoft has been this slow motion avalanche of stupid. The firm really needs to cull management and stomp out what must be ongoing interdepartmental wars over policy and prestige. Then focus.
Booting Balmer would be a good first step, IMO.
...or sell them at a stupidly low price? Why "sit" on a stockpile of rapidly depreciating tech? If the price were less than half the price of an iPad they would sell easily. What Microsoft need just now is market penetration. With enough users the apps and accessories will sell, and then the developers will come once there's sufficient volume to make actual money, and THEN they can think about profiting off the NEXT generation, but for now they need to admit this one is a bust and almost give them away. Currently an iPad is what £350.....the Surface tablet would have to be at £100 to tempt me....
Thats a pretty poor build quality
Business Strategy of Death!
Almost a billion dollars in unsold inventory. Wow.
I'd say the potential consumer base is in talks with another team.
Those who want locked down hardware are already buying Apple's shit.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I would think those units would sell very well once they reloaded them with Linux and marked them down to about $50, same as the Chinese equivalents flooding the market.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
that's why they offered T Europe TechEd 2013 huge discount for the participants.....RT was like 80 EUR while Pro around 200 EUR
Moon still orbiting Earth, news at 11.
Seriously, this is probably the least surprising news of the year.
MS jumping on the tablet bandwagon with a windows tablet? *yawn* the most obvious business decision Balmer could make.
That it would suck and sell badly? The only people who didn't expect that were the ones not yet born when MS launched the Zune. Not only that MS first version of everything sucks so bad you have to be either a MS employee or a total moron with brain damage, amnesia and an IQ below room temperature to buy one, but especially in the mobile sector MS is so much of a non-player that their de-facto-acquisition of Nokia destroyed one of the largest mobile phone manufacturers instead of boosting the sales of MS mobile devices.
If they gave away a "greatest idiot on the planet" medal with each tablet sold, they might increase sales and do something honest for a change.
So, aside from click-baiting, why is this article on /. ?
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
First, Microsoft sells them at about twice what an ordinary tablet sells at. That in itself is enough to make me not want to buy one. After all, if I want to buy overpriced computer hardware I'll buy it from Apple (which I do already—Macs, though, not the iPac/iPhone). Then there is that boot sector virus they call an operating system that runs on it. It's awful on a desktop or a laptop; it's only marginally better on the Surface because using one's finger is a little bit more intuitive in the way they have it laid out. So, the question I want to have answered is why did they actually sell so many? Are there really that many stupid people with the money to throw away? Lots of money and stupidity usually don't correlate unless you're in Congress (especially if you're a Republican) or you've won the lottery.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
I always thought the Surface was meant to spur OEM innovation, by setting a standard or example for how a good Windows 8 tablet experience can work. The hardware is pretty good, although the Pro configuration is still way too expensive for what it does. The real problem is that Win 8 sucks balls, even for a tablet. Vista was bad, and I remember people joking about it being the OS to skip, like ME and 98 (1st edition), but I've never experienced the total vitriolic attitude towards an MS OS like I have with Win 8. People hate it, and they seem to hate the weird touchscreen desktop solutions.
Right now, my clients can still get away with purchasing Win 7 through VLC downgrade rights and OEM software, but if Microsoft ever drops that option without actually fixing 8, they'll be more than screwed. People are already integrating Apple as it is.
Wow, for being based upon a trash OS, I'm not surprised to see a loss. Although with less than a year on market, and showing nearly a billion in losses...ouch!
Their "newish" XBox product has lost nearly three billion in the decade its been on market as well. The latest (still unreleased) model is getting really harsh reviews, for doing things such as dropping backwards compatibility, and it still hasn't even hit the market yet.
Is Microsoft successful in any market, where they're not already entrenched?
How much did they lose on the Zune? How much do they stand to lose if they can't find a way to make the XboxOne competitive? Maybe it's time to reassess their business model.
Now we wait for the massive discounts like HP's TouchPad!
Never felt the need for a toy just to browse the interwebs. And it'd be just like my phone, 'they' tell me what I can and can't do with it. No upgrades to newer major releases. They introduce glaring bugs in the firmware, and refuse to fix it because it's past its 5 second lifetime. No thanks, to any tablet.
Reasons:
------------
1. too expensive for the specs
2. the keyboard looks like shit (and probably quite literally feels like shit, too)
3. doesn't run traditional Windows desktop apps
Another reason I wish I could add, but in reality is not a reason:
4. doesn't run Linux / vendor-locked
A win8 tablet that is restricted to a small subset if software at a price much higher than an android tablet, losers. They may get the Pro to work, but the RT was/is doomed, though I'd buy one when the price halves again. my wife can use it for sudoku and card games, and I would get my iPod back.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
to any developer who writes and submits a Win8 app to the Microsoft App Store that gets accepted.
That would be interesting.
Donate all of them to education and under-privileged families. Write them off as charity and start working to develop newer models.
I know I shouldn't say this on Slashdot, but I actually feel bad for Microsoft. At least for the developers who worked on this project.
Most people have no use for a tablet. It is a device that is an inbetween that they don't need. They have a smartphone, so that is a small, low power, device for browsing the web n' such that travels with you everywhere. They then also have a laptop (and sometimes desktop) for when they need more serious stuff and to do thing actually productive (touch screens are not useful for most kinds of creation, even simple creation like writing an e-mail).
Well a tablet is a device in between those two. It runs a phone OS and is only maybe a little more powerful, but is much larger. Ok... so that does what for you precisely?
Now in some cases, people have a use for them. The medical profession is a particular one I can think of, using them to replace paper charts. But for most home users, they are a gadget without a purpose.
However, that is not a problem for the iPad (at least not for now) because it is a fashion accessory. It is trendy to have one. People ran out and bought them not because they said "Man this solves a need I have," but because they said "OMG that is so cool, I want one!" Utility was never a concern, they wanted to have it because it was the nifty thing to have.
Thing is, that works only for the iPad. That means there's an iPad market, not a tablet market. Other tablets aren't "cool by association" particularly MS stuff, since they've NEVER been able to pull off the cool/fashionable thing. So the Surface is going to sell for shit because there's just not a market for it. People look at it and say "Why would I want that?" since there's not the cool factor.
If there was a reason to own a tablet on a large scale, maybe they'd have a chance, but since there isn't it isn't going to go anywhere.
With such a sensible comment in general, I must assume that you are mixing up version numbers regarding Word for the Mac. I've used several versions, including 1.0 (unusable), 3.x (pretty good), 5.1 (even better) and then version 6.
This version was, if I remember correctly, a full rewrite, brining the code more in line with the Windows version. It was was a bug-infested nightmare. It is one of the few times I deliberately and voluntarily downgraded an application. They did get their act together, eventually - but version 6 was not a promising start.
"Money is a sign of poverty." - Iain Banks
I have no problem with Metro on a touch screen. I think it works as well as anything else I've used, better than the stock Android UI. Turns out those big tiles are really nice when you are batting at things with big, imprecise fingers. You don't want to try and operate the Windows desktop UI in touch, it doesn't work well. There are old tablets that do just that (people forget there have been Windows tablets since the XP days) and they are painful to use without a pen. Your fingers just aren't precise enough for the desktop UI.
So makes good sense on a tablet. The issue is trying to ram it in to a desktop OS. There is doesn't make sense. You have a nice precise mouse to use. It just takes up space and occludes your work. With a mouse and keyboard, it is a bad interface.
What they should have done (not that it would have helped the surface, there's no tablet market, there's an iPad market) it had the Metro UI for Windows RT, and not for Windows 8. Windows 8 should then have been able to run Metro programs in a resizable window. That way the tablet is usable, the desktop is usable, and it can run tablet programs, if needed.
In fact, turns out 8 is real nice when you do just that. You pick up Stardock's Start 8, which gives you a start menu instead of start screen, and Modern Mix, which takes Metro apps and puts them in a window instead of full screen. It works really great then.
The problem isn't with the UI, it is with where it is used.
An earlier post in slashdot said Microsoft has 1 million servers. Therefore, Microsoft could put these unsold Surface tablets into good use by converting them to servers. Instantly increase the number of servers by 600%. :)
My boss bought one and it was really quite a good device but I still can't handle the Win8 OS. Never works as it should, constantly jumping around, etc. What I would like is a simple tablet like this that I can put Linux on (Mint or Debian) that has the same keyboard. I think this would be the best travel "laptop" I could imagine. I recently went on vacation and took a small Android tablet which was really great but things like writing emails and navigating the web properly are lacking without a mouse and keyboard - and this is where MS did a great job. The flip over keyboard with mouse was super great.
Is there anything on the market that is nearly identical to the Surface Tablet that I can put a Linux distro on?
..the magic number.
Microsoft have been doing the smartphone thing, and indeed the tablet thing for YEARS before Apple ever released the iPhone/iPad. They have years of experience which any decently-run company would have use said experience to be able to refine the devices and operating systems and improve their standing in the marketplace. But no, they didn't make any impact on the smartphone/tablet market - Apple comes out with the first release of the iPhone and iPad and each becomes the standard for their respective device fields. And now MS is trying to play catchup even to Android.
They had the market before anyone else. If they just took it more seriously they could have owned it lock and key. Fucking idiots.
They could rebrand them, reinstall the OS on them and sell them as Android tablets. ...
People want those apparently
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Nobody wants a desktop operating system on a mobile device, and nobody wants a mobile operating system on a desktop device.
As we sit here and bash Microsoft, ever wonder why you can still find iPad 2 models selling brand-new in stores?
I can still walk into my local Target and find Playstation 2 models for sale.
'Softy sinks, sadly.
Should sell suckless,
Savory servers. Seriously.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Ballmer keeps making the same stupid mistakes over and over.
Each time he fires the people who tried to warn him because it 'only failed because they weren't enthusiastic enough'
Although, as a fan of alternative OSes, I'd be happy to have him hold back Microsoft forever.
Microsoft is widely misunderstood.
The Surface Tablets are just the result of a change in corporate strategy. Before, Microsoft was doing evil to customers. Now it does evil to itself, because that's easier.
We have enough schools and other social places where this GIFT!! will be very good :)
I am a PC and Microsoft Surface was my idea!
I take it to meetings and take notes with OneNote and switch to my calendar or e-mail or Office when needed. Also if I am troubleshooting something away from my office, I take it with me and connect to the Internet with a screen size that is preferable to a phone. If I need to do something not supported in the RT system, I can use Remote Desktop to a full-fledged Windows machine. Now, I could do some of this with an Android or iPad, but it's nice having the Windows interface. Also I prefer carrying the tablet around to lugging around a laptop. Having said all that, I still do 95% of my work at a desktop, and I'm not sure the value from the tablet is really worth the high price.
At home, I don't have any need for a tablet. I'm either doing involved stuff on a laptop or quickly looking things up on a phone.
Disclaimer: I purchased a Surface Pro for personal/school use.
The RT was, quite frankly, a bad idea.
The pro has a lot going for it, if you're in the market for a moderately high-powered x86 ultrabook with a stylus and touch screen. Basically, it's the cat's pajamas for people that need something exactly like that (I do audio recording and some graphic design work when I'm out and about), and it's an overpriced novelty for anyone that doesn't. No remorse here, I love the thing, but I know I'm not a typical end user and there aren't enough people like me to support the kind of R&D that goes into this sort of device.
The RT takes all of the advantages the pro has, and throws them out the window.
You're left with an underpowered, oversized tablet with an underwhelming user interface and no applications to speak of. It's pretty much the perfect storm of uselessness. Which makes it no real big surprise that it's selling badly.
At least with the pro they can sell it to the developer/designer folks (my sister, who does photoshop work on a regular basis, was drooling all over it) instead. The RT? Not so much.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
The surface had quite a bit of potential out of the gate as a tablet. In terms of hardware and OS it was fairly well done. There were two serious problems with it though.
The first was that Microsoft tried to sell it at a 'premium' price from the get go. Widespread speculation before MSRP was released was that for it to be competitive the price was going to have to be roughly have of what it was. The model had some heat and power management issues from a poor choice of chip selection, but was otherwise fairly well executed. You could use the desktop side of the device just like any other Windows 8 device.
The second problem was the companion Surface RT. It looked almost identical from the outside to the Surface but simply wasn't (lower quality screen etc). The bundled version of Office didn't include Outlook and it couldn't be legally used for business purposes per the license. It looked like it had Windows 8, but it didn't and app incompatibility killed you when you discovered that you had to purchase special RT versions for anything, if they were available at all. The only way to ever install anything to the RT was through their market store where everything had to have a minimum $1.50 purchase price.
The confusion between the two devices that were almost exactly the same size, shape and name and functionally very different meant that the very bad Surface RT reputation killed the fairly good Surface. Unfortunately for Microsoft with their arrogance of selling both devices for hundreds of dollars more than they should have from the beginning the Surface never stood a chance to begin with.
Only question is while they dump the devices or while the destroy them?
Tried to give away 10,000 RT tablets to teachers at ISTE in San Antonio last month, 17,000 attendees and I heard that they still had around 1000 left at the end of the conference. The teachers biggest comments were "this won't work in my classroom", "I will give it to my kid so I can have my iPad back" and "why is there not a Google App?". With many schools going to Google Apps for education, this is a major fail.
By talk, obviiously, that ends up more 'argue'.
During the 'talk' it became apparent that Sinofsky quite believed that I no longer needed a file manager, and that it was OK to both break my current work mode, and provide a new broken work mode, and provide a windows machine that would not run windows software, nor would it be able to be added to a domain. I mean, what can be better than if I create local users I have to work through two UIs and process methods to do what happened under local users previously.
Its quite compounded when you even now try to have conversations.
"I run engineering for the core group in the os division. Let’s talk about the things you have issues with. Winrt & domain join is the big one, right? Usability for desktop users – I am guessing on non touch machines is the second. I am happy to talk about either of these."
I've turned that 'offer' down now - because quite frankly there comes a time when a vendor *actually* needs to be listening and stop talking. And 'I am happy to talk about either of these' is in the end insane. Noboady at MS should be 'happy' to talk about these. When they start being as 'unhappy' as I am and they start to actually get a clue, then I may start talking.
I think it was fairly clear to anyone sensible that RT (The system and the API), Surface, and Notro and other aspects were wrong, still are wrong, and are not going to stop being wrong because someone in marketing things they can be made 'right'.
I will admit a perverse pleasure in some basic historically proven events. Sinofsky being fired. Deserved for attitude alone, but partially a shame as he can deliver something - that somthing has to be right however. And seeing his utter failing in both 8 and with Surface after he spent so much time bullshitting about 'how great they are'.
98% of windows stuff happens on the real windows systems. Even in 8, that translates back to people running desktop and installing back a start menu, and running their standard legacy software.
I've tested 8.1 and the fundamentals remain utterly broken. The window dressing of 'fixing' what was wrong isn't whats required to fix the problems.
We`re all equal
...for a dollar.
I wish Balmer was the Kin of CEOs then he'd be gone in a couple of months and completely forgotten about by next year. Alas he is more like clippy.
MS sells a Windows tablet that doesn't run any windows programs and has nearly zero native apps, and it's not selling well? The tablet offered essentially nothing, and people realized that. Apple tablets had a huge support structure (iTunes) when they launched - they couldn't DO anything, but you had access to CONSUME all sorts of stuff. Android tablets had a reasonable support structure, and if you decided that you just wanted to try it out -or hack it - there were dozens of bottom dollar versions you could buy and not feel bad throwing away if it didn't pan out.
Microsoft actually missed the boat waaaaay back when they EOL'd WM6 phones and didn't have a replacement. If they had had the forethought to create a migration plan before WM was left for dead, they would have been beyond either of the other two players. Granted the idea of a captured marketplace with dirt cheap applications (iTMS) was a true paradigm shift in software sales and mobile applications, but MS was caught flat footed. In trying to catch up, they put their expensive hardware out before anybody was using the software. If the Surface RT had launched 5 years after the Win phone, it might have had a chance.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dear Microsoft,
I can sell all of those Surface Tablets for you at a slight profit.
Step 1 - Unlock the bootloader on them
Step 2 - release a free app to load a new OS on them
Step 3 - release information so Linux and Android people can port to the device quickly.
Step 4 - Profit. Not a lot of profit but you will get rid of them and help the hardware actually get used.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I love Ballmer, if anyone is going to permantly bury Microsoft it will be Ballmer. I say let Ballmer stay until he is forced out by the shareholders revolting and then Icann can show him how to properly strip mine a company of anything useful.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
Can we please stop linking to IBITimes articles until they remove auto-playing video/audio ads? Together, we can make it happen.
www.clarke.ca
I wouldn't mind paying $100 to try it out myself. For $50, I would buy one for everyone in my house including my 12 years old dog.
They could dump all these into some african or south asian schools for FREE. Problem solved and future prospect guaranteed.
I'll give you $20 for as many as you can ship for that price.
But can you play ET on them?
That means they're going to have a huge contest where almost everyone who enters wins one, right?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
Let's make one consistent interface for all devices, yay!
...6 million surface tablets later
Great idea! But does it have to not suck though?
Hell no!
Okay...let's give that a go.
No one can handle the choreographics it takes to operate those things.
1. no one wants win8
2. no one wants a win8 tablet
3. 6 million unsold tablets shows this to be the case
4. no amount of marketing and "message" can remove win8
5. suggesting so makes you sound like a marketing person
If they sold em off for like 100 bucks a pop, I would certainly buy one. As much as I hate windows 8 on the desktop I think its great on a tablet. They aren't THAT bad, just a little underwhelming compared to the competition.
Just install android on them, and they will sell like hot cakes.
I have a Surface Pro at work (not RT). It's my daily computer, and it's pretty slick. At work I've got a mouse, keyboard and display attached (desktop is extended to the display). When I travel, I take the clicky keyboard case. It's a solid piece of kit that works really well and integrates seamlessly with our network environment at the office. All my applications and content is accessible. I'm the only person in the office with a tablet as my 'only' computer, and when I travel it's the only thing I take and everything is there. Contrast that with my colleagues who all have a PC (or Mac) + a tablet. Don't know why anyone would buy an ultrabook when this gadget is on the market.
According to my maths, that makes $150 per device.
Either they're cutting back the "value" of the product and taking it next year as an "operating loss" again (to reduce tax burdens: no point if the losses are more than your taxes in one year to do it all in one year, spread it out and you get more back!), or they're on massive margins on the surface tablets...
I'll take one if you can install linux on it.
As in, I want you to pre-install linux for me, and I wanna watch a high ranking microsoft employee to do it.
I'd pay you $500 just to watch.
Soon, we'll find them in Big Lots selling for $99
"Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons, for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
A failure of a product is NEVER a marketing failure, sorry.
Windows8 itself is not bad, and in a touch device is very good, indeed.
But being a good touch in touch devices just in 2013, it's not enough to raise in the market share.
And, in a desktop/notebook without touch, most people is trying hack it installing third part programs to get the start menu back. Not forgetting the mix of old desktop / touch interface, in a desktop environment.
And, while comparing with iOS/Android, in the Arm version, yes, Win8 is lacking application, which, of course, can be improved.
The Microsoft tablet might be great however I never learned anything about it from the TV adds. The adds showed people dancing and throwing the devices around. I'm sorry nobody I know does that with high cost electronic devices. I could not identify with those people who were acting very weird. Why not show someone using the thing in a way that shows off a cool innovative feature of the device. Say the click on keyboard. Show some one with an Ipad having trouble typing and then the ease of using the keyboard. Unless of course the keyboard sucks. If it is better in some way than the other products out there demo the better. If not why did Microsoft bother building it in the first place?
$900 million write down on the Surface RT tablets ... stockpile of six million unsold tablets.
So they cost $150 each to build? Selling at retail for what, $500 maybe?
But I thought the whole point of Surface was a long-term play to get Microsoft on tablets and eventually phones. If Microsoft is dead serious about actually getting market share, they need to be selling those tablets at cost ($150 retail), and eat the loss.
What would Microsoft rather have? A $900 million write-down with six million new tablet users to show for it? Or a $900 million write-down with ZERO new tablet users to show for it? Microsoft chose the latter.
Hey that's not fair!...I LIKE Bing, it has the nice animated start page and actually gives you a slice of the money they make datamining. There is NOTHING nice about Ballmer, not nice for customers, not nice for stockholders, nothing nice at all.
If you want to compare him to a previous MSFT product there is only one that truly fits...MS Bob. Everyone said it was a dumb idea, nobody wanted the thing, but "fuck you you are getting it anyway" and naturally it bombs HARD. That is Ballmer in a nutshell, everyone tells him "nobody wants this Steve", the reviewers, beta testers, they ALL say its a disaster and will waste billions but "fuck you you are getting it anyway" and what do you know? it bombs hard. That is Ballmer in a nutshell, trying to force MSFT to be an upscale boutique brand when in reality they are like Walmart, but he keeps trying to slap a coat of paint on a Pinto and get Porsche money and its never gonna work.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Hopefully this means they'll start appearing on Woot soon and I can get one uber-cheap to go with my Zune...
Tee he he he heh heh ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. ...Hehehehehe ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.
Uh, hum. He he he he ha ha ha HA HA HAaaaaaahh.
*sniff* uhhh hum hm hm hm.
Ahhhhhh.
sig: sauer
Did they just say they had six million unsold firing range targets they're sitting on? Ten for ten bucks sounds like a good deal right?
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
it's intense
Years of failed touchscreen products lead to an obnoxious abundance in the future:
http://trekcore.com/gallery/albums/picard/picard-padds.jpg
yup plenty of schools could use them
is a GOOD CEO?
Fire sale! Fire sale! Fire sale!
Chairs. Maybe Ballmer will start throwing them.
Simply allow the user to install her favorite version of GNU/Linux or the BSD's. Maybe even pre-install GNU/Linux or a BSD first. Heck, even Minux. Instead of having landfill, you would be able to recover some of your costs.
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
Bad USB device support is also a big factor. They boast about having the port in the ads but there's not much you can do with it.
Should I buy one to replace my HP Touchpad?
So many mistakes to choose from...
Wait a minute... I forgot, HP made the Touchpad cheap and useful... I guess I won't get the RT.
Hack the loader.
It's a mantra. Say it slowly, three times...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
>The window dressing of 'fixing' what was wrong isn't whats required to fix the problems.
as evidenced by the return of the Start button, not the Start menu.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
It seems to me that there's nothing _wrong_ with Windows RT - if they had got there first, it may well have been adopted in the same way as the iPad.
Apple had trodden the hard path for 15 years before the iPad ever hit the shelves on the Apple Store. While Microsoft was busy soaking up all the enterprises and small businesses leveraging their Office monopoly into a desktop OS monopoly and then into a sizeable portion of the backoffice/server markets, Apple focused on mobile and consumer market. First the (failed) Newton, then later on with the iPod, iTunes, retail Apple Stores to bypass retail channel cock-blockers, then iPhone, App Store, and finally the iPad. Apple fucking makes their bread and butter on this shit. All these steps are ones that organically grew a company designed to support and promote the iPad to make it successful.
Microsoft ignored that vision and business model for years until they realized it could threaten their profits and could endanger the PC market. So they created a Windows Phone that didn't quite catch on, and Microsoft Stores that primarily showed off their Xbox and Kinect, Now they think that their cargo-cult mimicking of Apple's look and feel (hey that worked once before) will help them steal Apple's market?
Meanwhile Android is busy soaking up the entire lower-end of the market (mainly with the cheap Chinese hardware), leaving no breathing room for anything non-Apple, non-Google based, and is encroaching on Apple's turf as well. Microsoft should be far more concerned about Google's moves - Android tablets and Chromebooks will cripple or replace the PC market long before Apple encroaches on that turf. Perhaps the best move now would be for Microsoft to co-opt Android like Amazon did. Kindle Fire seems to be doing ok (say compared to the Surface RT).
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
I need a new toilet paper holder!
So, roughly 6 tablets per server?
I would take a free one... 5 minutes after someone figures out how to root one of these and install Android. Until then, pass.
Me thinks Apple should purchase all those 6 million Surfaces, for, say 1 cent a piece and have a huge party where every Apple employee can smash at least one Surface with a large iron mallet.. Or more than one, depending on rank. Something like what Vogons did to crabs.
Our government (Kenya) has partnered with microsoft to give laptops to all first-graders. I guess the winRT tablets could be coming home.
Put that hardware to work.
Microsoft should just up and move to China, where imitation of others' innovation is standard practice -- and unexpectedly successful in terms of profit. What MS does best is to copy software features and market them as their own product innovations. The Chinese understand how to make a profit out of this practice.
listening to this smug blathering about your collection of yuppie trophies makes me want to vomit.
When I get a better experience on a $120 tablet from Wal-mart why not.
The surface tablets were marketed as being 100-200 dollar devices, and no word about being locked down as bad as they are.
A guy even wrote an x86 exe stack for the RT but microsoft cant? thats pathetic.
I'm sure there are reasons, but at least try!
Granted, they just want to copy Apple. Apple says "Look, this is new and original and you want it!" even though it's just some old rehash they decided to finally integrate, or some utterly minor tweak, and people stand overnight in lines to fork over their money.
I wonder how much they pay him. Is it more than 640k?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
FIRE SALE!!!
Is it possible that the MeatHeads can blame Obama?
The Surface RT was a supremely bad idea in that it offered nothing new in terms of capability as compared to what's already on the market; and, oh by the way, let's offer that nothing new in Windows form! Ugh. But the Surface Pro ... it's a game changer. I'm seeing a lot of them in college classrooms where students are replacing their paper notebooks with the Surface Pro/OneNote. Laptops have been in classrooms for a while, but taking notes in math class on a laptop is difficult and a pen-enabled device is far easier to work with.
MS should've come up with more distinctive names for these vastly different devices.
Eat fruits and vegetables tied to longest lifetime
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - ingest fewer than 5 servings of fruit and vegetables day by day is connected with a better probability of dying early, in line with an outsizes study from Scandinavian nation.
fruit and vegetables
Crap, I have no moderation points today. I'm having the time of my life reading this thread XD +2 ROFLMAO
It just doesn't know it yet.
Gee, all those H-1b scabs doing all that cool programming. H-1b scabs produced the wonder of the ages, Windows 8. Gee, what wonders will they accomplish with more H-1b scabs? Now, the H-1b scabs in production have pulled another wonder...
Of course they are: Surface RT was released shortly before surface pro. RT using arm and pro using x86 architecture. Surface RT applications were touted to not run on surface pro or on your OC while everything surface pro = win 8 on your pc. With that and the RT price point why wouldn't you a) go to a competitor or B) wait for pro or even better c) use another win 8 tablet with an atom processor for cheaper than the pro ? Microsoft did a good job of splitting its potential buyer base
...and maybe they'll hatch.
Maybe the NSA could buy them for their new server farm. Does the RT have USB host ability?
Or send them as "lottery prizes" to a lucky six million red-flagged citizWtargets. The built-in camera and microphone could come in handy with the special NSA-edition firmware.
Like losing a reputation and diluting a brand on a series of terrible products.
And I asked around, and people generally agree that Nvidia made a net profit on their deals with Microsoft. But at what cost...
Why FORD contracted Microsoft to develop it's sync system is mind boggling! Microsoft hasn't developed any successful hardware in its history. I bought a 2013 CMax with Sync with reservation and against my better judgement but mileage estimates swayed my decision. After 2700 miles I dumped it due to the clunky non intuitive Sync system. In navigation mode if I said home the voice ask "Phone" and only went downhill from there. Every auto review criticizes and pans the system yet Ford continues to force this on buyers rather than dump a lost cause. Think Zune player and now the Surface tablet major failures. Microsoft just took a huge write off for the surface tablet due to lack of interest and lack of sales. Stuck with a huge inventory that no one wants they had no option. How about quit, go away, bury Microsoft and move on. They are no longer relevant nor have the ever been. The only success was software from decades ago now ingrained in corporate America just luck! But luck runs out and the party is OVER!
Who really thought the ZunePad would be a hit?
Sounds uncomfortable. I suppose they don't have any chairs left...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."