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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?
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Then I'll buy one, I could do with a tablet to run Fedora :)
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...
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?
Maybe because that's the only platform where the Metro interface makes a lick of sense.
Smart move. They are sure to go up in value over time. Like Furbies.
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
Why shouldn't they? It's always nice to see a competitor get tied up in a project that will never be profitable.
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....
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.
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 not entirely fair. Microsoft has tried (and failed) multiple times with tablets long before the iPad.
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
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.
Why is MS sitting on so many when they knew they were selling poorly? Oh yeah, they had contracted minimums. Maybe you should look up contracted minimums first. If you can't make money on the contracted minimum, you probably shouldn't take the contract.
Learn to love Alaska
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.
So true. I remember my 1st M$ phone. It was crap: crashed multiple times during a day, and the battery life was absolutely terrible (and this was with a stock/no-apps install). It would actually restart in the middle of phone calls!
Been an iPhone user since day one - best decision ever.
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.
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.
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.
Nobody wants a desktop operating system on a mobile device, and nobody wants a mobile operating system on a desktop device.
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?
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
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?
Microsoft was in tablets and phones before Apple.
Nobody remembers this because the people that used them are still working through the psychological trauma caused by using these fucking garbage devices. Microsoft was trying to shoehorn the full weight of Windows into places it didn't belong, and it showed. While everyone likes to think that consumer electronic customers are sheep, even the sheep know to stay away from a field full of hemlock.
Fast forward to today, and we have Windows RT being written off. It's an answer to a question nobody asked: I wonder what it's like to have a crippled version of Windows 8 that runs on ARM and has no application compatibility whatsoever?
At least WinCE / PocketPC / WinMo has a use in embedded systems and retail scan guns.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
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.
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.
Difference being the TouchPad is awesome.
Not really.
I was a webOS dev for 2 years, and truly excited for the HP hardware refresh to the webOS line, but when Rubinstein presented the tablet it was already antiquated by then current standards of mobile computing. Apple had just released the retina iPad which was more powerful and of better quality for virtually the same price. This was also the point where Android started picking up serious steam on the tablet front as well... It was a dead duck before it started, and it was a bloody shame, but I digress.
The current Surface offerings from MSoft are actually quite nice (albeit a lil pricey) and are used heavily in small to medium sized medical practices for EMR/EHR implementation. I'm just not sure where MSoft went wrong with this brand, it should have found a comfy niche, but seems to have had less of an impact than even netbooks.
>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.