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."

Comments

Re:progress(?)

[jtownatpunk.net]

Actually, Microsoft was on phones long before Apple. It was called PocketPC in 2000. Switched to Windows Mobile in 2003. Then Windows Phone in 2010. They had around 40% market share in 2007. Which is when the iPhone came out. I had WinMo phones back in the day. That was the phone to get if you wanted apps, the ability to run a cellular data WiFi router, etc.

The iPhone was Apple's response to MS, RIM, and Palm. Not the other way around. And their response crushed the competition.

Re:How can that be?

[TheRaven64]

I played a bit with a Surface (we have a good relationship with MSR, so lots of people with them are floating around the place) and it seems like a pretty nice device. The problem is not that it's bad, it's that it doesn't really have any compelling advantages. There are several things it seemed to do a bit more cleanly than iOS or Android, but nothing that it did a lot better, and if you want to write code for it you're limited to quite a restrictive environment (which probably doesn't matter to non-geeks, but it will have a knock-on effect on the availability of software).