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Microsoft's Surface RT Was Doomed From Day One
Nerval's Lobster writes "Last fall, Microsoft launched its Surface RT tablet with high hopes. The sleek touch-screen ran Windows RT, a version of Windows 8 designed for hardware powered by the ARM architecture, which dominates the mobile-device market; it also included a flexible keyboard that doubled as a screen cover. Microsoft executives told any journalist who would listen that Surface RT would position their company as a major player in the tablet arena, ready to battle toe-to-toe with Apple and various Android device manufacturers. Fast-forward to this week, and Microsoft announcing its financial results for the quarter ended June 30. Amidst metrics such as operating income and diluted earnings per share, one number stood out: a $900 million charge (the equivalent of $0.07 per share) related to what Microsoft called 'Surface RT inventory adjustments.' Microsoft had already slashed Surface RT prices by $150, so that nearly-billion-dollar charge wasn't a total surprise — but it did underscore that Surface RT is a bomb. From the outset, Surface RT had an issue with the potential to mightily trip up Microsoft: While Windows RT looks exactly like Windows 8, it can't run legacy Windows programs built for x86 processors, limiting users to what they can download from the built-in Windows Store app hub. While the Windows Store launched with 10,000 apps, that seemed paltry in comparison to the well-developed Android and iOS ecosystems. There's likely nothing that Microsoft could have done about this—every platform has to start somewhere, after all—but the relative lack of apps put Surface RT between the proverbial rock and the hard place: it couldn't rely on Windows' extensive legacy, and it didn't have enough content to make it a true contender from the outset against the iPad and Android tablets. Then there was the matter of price. Microsoft could have taken the Amazon route and sold Surface RT at a relative pittance in order to drive adoption—something that made the Kindle Fire a sizable hit. However, that sort of pricing scheme isn't in Microsoft's corporate DNA: it only cut Surface RT's price several months after release, as a defensive maneuver, when it's likely to do much less good."
..it failed. The last thing we need right now is more Windows.
Related/recent /. article
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
At least that's they way it looks on the surface.
Assuming the price for the hardware continues to dive...
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Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I think Ballmer will be out by the end of Q1 next year and Sinofsky will be on the short list of replacements. Bill Gates doesn't want to be CEO of Microsoft again, and he's old and out of touch anyway.
Microsoft should NOT be a devices and services company, it should be a consumer-facing OS and services company. Apple and Samsung are much better at consumer devices than MS will ever be.
Call me when they drop to $99.
Have gnu, will travel.
Those stupid ads with college students dressed up like what art school students think office workers dress like and ecstatically breakdancing around on tables to the clacky sound of attaching a bluetooth keyboard to a tablet just creeped me the fuck out. WTF MS, why don't you just put BillG & Seinfeld in your fail-mercials like you did back in the day? Or just give me the money if you're just going to flush it down the toilet.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Methinks the real issue would be having to deal with the Windows 8 interface. On my Androids I hardly use any obscure apps. The only ones I download are Kindle and Spotify. But you'd have to pay me quite a lot every month to have me use Windows 8's godawful mish-mash of Metro/desktop, no matter what apps it had.
which is totally what she said
"..'that sort of pricing scheme isn't in Microsoft's corporate DNA..."
Er. No. MS sold both the original XBOX and the XBOX360 at a loss to drive adoption, the exact opposite of what the author is saying MS will not do...
Not a dup. The first was a blurb from IT Times, this one appears to be a slashdot origininal, judging from the link.
As to MS haters: How can you tell if someone hates Microsoft? Ask them if they've ever used MS software. If they say yes, they hate MS.
There isn't a technical reason why they couldn't have made .net applications work on arm, or Surface RT. In fact, you can build Metro applications with .net and they'll run on the RT just fine.
The problem is that they only want Metro stuff on there (except for Office).
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
I remember developing on a PowerPC 601 box for Windows NT. Then... nothing. Abandoned. Wasted effort.
I've said before the Surface marketing was one of the nails in the coffin. The TV ads mostly featured hipster dambasses dancing and hiphoping while spinning the Surface tablet. Very little if any product knowledge is communicated.
MS has to tell people WHY they should choose their option over iPad and dozens of Androids, Kindles, and Nooks. There are tablet for all price points. Some offer decent performance and graphics. Others are affordable. Surface is.... from Microsoft. I guess that's all you need to know.
Then there's the Metro GUI fiasco. MS basically appologizes for Metro on Windows 8 and offers a Metro-less option on the new betas. What does that tell a potential tablet buyer?
I think this thing will be discontinued within a year. If I were a Surface owner I'd be hoping for an Android or Linux port right about now. Can you root a Surface??? I guess I'm lucky I don't need to worry about that one.
Microsoft has never made a case for why people would want to buy a Surface RT. What does it have going for it that makes it stand out against the competition? Lets take a look:
iPad - The brand name that made tablets mainstream, and that's a big help when selling a product. Also works well and has a ton of apps.
Android (Fire, Samsung, Nexus, etc) - The most popular ones seem to all have price going for them: they're the best game in town if you want a $250 or less tablet. Lots of people fit into that category. Has lots of apps.
Surface Pro - It runs x86 Windows apps. The market that really wants that in a tablet is niche, but still.
Surface RT - Not cheap, not blowing anybody away in hardware specs, not boasting any interesting unique apps. Aside from really wanting a Metro tablet, what's the point? (And no, the average joe doesn't really want a Metro or Windows tablet.)
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
It's not that people hate Microsoft. It's that Microsoft acts as if it hates it's customers.
There's a certain weakness this exposes in Microsoft's products: the fact that people stay with them because they have legacy programs they can't let go of. Microsoft products don't sell themselves. The programs people want to run on them do.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The fundamental problem with that statement is that Microsoft got their foot in the door by making an OS that could run across multiple manufacturers who were building to a common standard. There have been compatibilitiy problems irking consumers ever since Vista x86_64 hit the market. Now throwing ARM into the mix alongside x86 and x86_64, where you don't even have that convenient x86 compatibility? Not a good encore.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
There isn't a technical reason why they couldn't have made .net applications work on arm, or Surface RT.
Except they'll fail horribly if they call native code that isn't part of the OS. If you need .zip compression, for example, you're probably calling zlib.dll, which isn't part of the OS and won't run on ARM unless you specifically install the ARM version.
Two words. Secure Boot. That is I think, the entire purpose of secure boot.
To be fair, Microsoft mice have always been pretty good.
No, I hate microsoft! Gates and company bullied and lied and pushed people out of business for their own self-interest. Now he wants to give away the billions he stole to charity. How about giving it back to the people you forced out of business! Modern day Robber Barons with no morals! So, yes we do hate Gates and his legacy! Hopefully, this is just another nail in their coffin! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robber_baron_(industrialist) Robber barons is a derogatory term applied to wealthy and powerful 19th-century American businessmen. By the late 1800s, the term was typically applied to businessmen who used what were considered to be exploitative practices to amass their wealth. These practices included exerting control over national resources, accruing high levels of government influence, paying extremely low wages, squashing competition by acquiring competitors in order to create monopolies and eventually raise prices, and schemes to sell stock at inflated prices to unsuspecting investors in a manner which would eventually destroy the company for which the stock was issued and impoverish investors. The term combines the sense of criminal ("robber") and illegitimate aristocracy (a baron is an illegitimate role in a republic).[1]
They're like Herpes. They'll never really go away.
Locking "Metro" apps to their store was their biggest mistake. You'd think that after Ballmer's "Developers, developers, developers" chant, that they would have known that ahead of time! Imposing artificial barriers like this would have killed them in the early 90's.
Apple gets away with calling that sort of nonsense "good for consumers", sure, but they're a special case.
Required reading for internet skeptics
What? I never ran Vista x64, but I did run Windows 7 and do run Windows 8 in 64-bit. The only compatibility problems I've ever seen are with 16-bit programs which I cannot run any more. XP 64 had more problems, but I've even had success with that. (Then again, I didn't have to set that one up.)
I don't doubt that there were occasional problems, but there would also have been occasional problems with just Vista, regardless of bitwidth. Almost everyone who's talked about 64-bit Windows says that the issues were basically ironed out in Vista and 7.
So what compatibility problems do you refer to?
And because people on /. seem to "forget" their history, ARM isn't even close to the first non-x86 architecture that Windows has been available for; it's previously supported Alpha (NT 3.1-4.0), MIPS (NT 3.1-4.0), Power (3.51-4.0), and Itanium (XP, Server 2003, and Server 2008).
That was a big part of it. Not letting RT join domains killed the enterprise sales. For the price of RT pro that can do that you could just get an ipad.
The Surface RT hardware is pretty nice. I'm an iPad user, but playing around with the Surface RT in a Microsoft store impressed me. The kickstand is neat, and the keyboard covers work really well (especially the one with actual travel). The problem was software.
People point out Metro as an issue, but that's not quite it; Metro is a travesty on the desktop (or laptop), true, but on a mobile touch platform it's very appropriate. The problem was lack of familiarity, lack of compatibility, and lack of marketing.
For the first issue, what I mean to say is that Surface RT has a full desktop interface, but restricts it severely. Metro is much better suited to a tablet, but people are used to the desktop interface, and Surface RT can still make a decent laptop (plug a mouse in and use the keyboard cover). Had the desktop been unrestricted on RT (no side-loading restrictions, same as regular Windows), then people could have transitioned more gradually, at their own pace, or even stuck to the desktop entirely if they wanted. This would have let people use the RT as a tablet when they wanted to, or as a laptop when they wanted to.
For the second issue, lack of compatibility, there is basically none. This ties in a bit to the third point, but the thing looks identical to normal Win8, so people expect it to run the same stuff. It doesn't. As has been pointed out, the architectural differences would not have prevented .NET apps from running at full speed on the RT (Microsoft just doesn't support it), and emulation of x86 code would have worked well for many apps, since any call to an OS function via Win32 would have resulted in native code execution anyhow. Depending on the application, that means that large parts of an x86 application would be running natively anyhow.
The third issue is lack of marketing. Microsoft did a terrible job educating people about what RT is (and how it differs from regular Windows), or why they would want it instead of an ultrabook or chromebook or other tablet. Users who did buy the RT were likely confused about why it wouldn't run their programs.
I think that a combination of an unrestricted desktop, compatibility with existing apps (via a native .NET environment and emulation), and better marketing could have made the Surface RT a success. Not necessarily a market leader, but at least it would have sold enough units to be considered successful. I know that I was personally tempted to get one to replace both my tablet and laptop until I realized how all the stuff that interested me would be disabled...
Microsoft could change their name to "MyopicSoft" and it would fit better. They sincerely believe that they are a popular company and that people cannot wait to get their hands on Microsoft products. Too many yes men. Too many marketing people drawing the wrong conclusions from their numbers. So they produced a high-priced product that was, frankly, pretty bland. And they tried to market this bland product as the greatest tablet ever, to a yawning generation that knows when they're being lied to. What a waste of time and energy.
Proverbs 21:19
Don't tell me... you were one of the original developers of QDOS?
Trolling is a art,
1. No Instagram client. True, this means nothing to the Slashdot crowd, but even a 41 megapixel camera is worthless if you can't share them. I don't think that this alone would cause WinRT/WP8 to remain on the shelf, but if $499 tablet X has instagram, $499 tablet Y has instagram, and $499 Surface doesn't have instagram, it's going to help narrow down the purchasing decisions pretty quick to anyone who uses the service regularly.
2. Too many migrations at once. Amongst the things that helped jump-start the iPhone back in 2007 was the fact that it integrated nicely with the iTunes library that people already had. Android integrated nicely with the gmail and picasa accounts people already had, and Google went to great lengths to simplify extending those services. Microsoft had hackneyed support for gmail (outlook.com is natively required), no official dropbox support (skydrive is natively supported), no support for iTunes (Xbox Music is natively supported), no drag-and-drop file system support; there's a fancy desktop client for it..but it doesn't work under Windows RT. Going the Microsoft route requires LOTS of changes for many people.
3. The devices that require less migration of stuff frequently cost the same or less.
4. Friends and family had iPads or Android tablets already. Easy ways to learn about new apps and figure out how to do some things are explained socially. If you're getting a WinRT device, you're standing alone. At some level, tablets are fashion accessories for many. This doesn't work when you're the only one with a tablet branded with a name reminiscent of your ridiculously locked down work PC or your slow, spyware infested home PC.
5. Little incentive for devs to help change any of this.
Honestly, I don't think either of those issues had an impact on sales... The RT tablets should have been priced somewhere between the iPad, and Android tablets... if they were around $250-300 they would have sold fine (relatively speaking). As it is, they were priced against more capable, and powerful, low end laptops. They were dramatically more expensive than most competing tablets. They were doomed from the start on pricing alone.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Interesting how that same tactic worked for Jobs but makes Gates seem like a bull in a china shop.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
Steve Ballmer is not a good business man.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
They were dramatically more expensive than most competing tablets.
Nah, if I recall, they were on par with iPads. I think the lack of apps really did them in here, plus the price. If you had $500 burning a hole in your pocket and you were itching to try a tablet last year would you dip your toe in the water by buying an already established platform with tons of apps, acceptence, and user experience, or a brand new one with not so much of that, for about the same price? Microsoft should have been selling those things for a song from the get-go. Surface is a good interface but not so scary great that its going to whisk those tablets out the door.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
The problem is that with RT, MS made a cheap knock-off of their own product. It looked a lot like the pro to the average consumer, but cost a little less and wouldn't actually do the things that the real surface would. But since MS doesn't know how to bargain price, it was an expensive cheap knock-off.
Consumers felt just like the excited kid on his birthday anticipating his Transformers action figures he just knows he's getting, only to unwrap the present and discover his parents were confused by the 'Transmogrifiers' action figures that say 6 exciting phrases in Chinenglish.
anyways, you CAN make legacy api programs for windows rt.. they run just fine, there's plenty of apps available. you just need a jailbreak to be able to run them.. it is possible to make them, they are useful.
but they wanted people to use the appstore. because they get cash from that. fuck practicality WE WANT MONEY!!!!!!! that pretty much is the long term plan with it. to create a separate ecosystem, so that because it's separate people don't question why 30% of their autodesk purchase goes to MS as tax..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
have you ever seen one?
the screen is good, the build quality is good, performance is decent.
but add up all those parts, you end up with a device that's got a serious identity crisis.
We have a pro in the office. I can't figure out what it's trying to replace. it's not quite a tablet (it's .5 inches think and has a fan).. and it's not quite a laptop - the keyboard cover (while it's a decent keyboard) is not as good as a true laptop.
MS wanted it to do too many things.. it does none of them well. even at $150 off, they're still not selling.
So what's left for Microsoft?. The RT was their feet in the ARM water, but they barely got wet. So all they have left is the Desktop market that keeps declining. Future wise, their core business model has bombed, leaving Microsoft in a river with no paddle. I guess stockholders can relax, seeing that nobody is betting on Microsoft's future; judging from their stock. If they were betting on Microsoft's future, their stock would be pretty grim by now.
Take a step back for a moment, when in the last several years has there been any good news about Microsoft?. Exactly, so what is holding their stock value up?. The news gets worse everyday, to the point where there is a big restructuring going on and everything from Microsoft is going Subscription based. The general idea here is a Company wouldn't do this unless they see a future in which they're strapped for cash. Subscription models lock customers in and keep the money flowing.
I'm willing to bet very soon we will see a version of Windows running on the cloud. You'll have the hardware, but the software is on Azure; and you will pay for it. Over and over again. If the recent outings about MS/NSA aren't enough to make people switch, the Windows Azure won't be either. It's hard to beat an addiction, especially when it's forced upon people whom are unaware of real options or how to use those alternative options. A sad state of affairs really.
You can't break into the market against the market maker when your (perceived) price to benefit is higher. You either need to be cheaper or better or have better marketing. Preferably all of those.
That's the same thing that killed other also (never) rans, like the HP Touchpad.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
And that's all I need. I think once you get past a certain number of apps, does it really matter any more?
Tony
The cost doesn't matter because they were trying to enter a new but very established market. Anyone with a spare $700 already has an iPad.
The only logical way to enter the market would be to buy their way in: giving away the hardware and hoping to make it up on MS App Store sales. They could have given RTs to schools full of children, sold them in phone kiosks at the mall for $50, stuffed them free in cereal boxes. Giving away a billion dollars worth of hardware is the only approach that would have made an impact.
The real crime against Microsoft's shareholders is there was already sufficient evidence that there was no room in the market for a fourth player. Look at the Nook: it's pretty much the same as a Kindle Fire HD, and it's even priced competitively. It's priced well below the iPad mini. Yet Barney Snowball is completely tanking as a result of its failure. Who at Microsoft could have believed that adding "me three" to B&N's "me too" was ever going to work?
If Microsoft wants to be a leader again, they've got to get in front of a trend, not follow it for four years then release a clone. They also have to stop swallowing their own bullshit and stop believing "ours will have the coolest software." Even if they did have the coolest software, it doesn't matter. Nobody with a wallet gives a damn. Consumers have proven they want "new", not "better".
John
I am actually glad the Surface RT failed. I also wish the Windows Phone to fail, even though I own a Lumia and find it much better than similarly priced Android phones. I hate that I cannot write or run my own programs on a machine I own without paying MS 100 USD per year. That's beyond stupid.
MS has probably the best dev tools in the industry; they even give it away for free. But if you want to actually run the program you wrote using these tools, you have to pay. What's the logic in that ?!
I actually like the hardware, both RT and the Lumia. I just hate the walled garden crap. Let us write code for our own machines and you will definitely make a lot more sells.
Besides, anybody who is okay with a walled garden already owns an iPad.
All of the original poster's points were painfully visible long before Day One. Windows RT was conceived a Dodo, born a Dodo and will die a Dodo. An evolutionary mutation that never really stood a chance: over-priced, incompatible, lacking apps and burdened with a very awkward UX. Darwinism at work. Instead of wasting their efforts on a two platforms, Microsoft should have focused on their full-Windows tablets and the corporate space and trying to make the Windows 8 user interface more intuitive and usable.
I think the tablets themselves were the same price; however, MS was pushing consumers to buy the keyboards as well which made them more expensive. Even it were the same price as iPad/Android with the accessories, Surface RT didn't have any real advantage. Sure the UI was different but I can't name one feature that would make a consumer choose it over existing tablets. This was the same issue as Zune and apparently MS didn't learn the lesson back then.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
And Microsoft? They are now the proud owners of a giant, giant cloud, and all the business they hope it will bring. And this is about the smartest bet they could make, because they really are out of options.
That would have been true if we hadn't discovered that 'The Cloud' has an open back door for the NSA.
The saddest instance, for me, is what MS did to Be. Be had deals in place with Dell and other vendors to sell computers preconfigured with BeOS. At the time, BeOS was a far-superior OS to Windows. MS didn't like that and added a 100%-illegal exclusivity clause to their contract...either sell all Windows machines or sell no Windows machines. They eventually got a wrist-slap fine, but it came way too late for Be which ran out of money and was forced to sell.
For this alone, I will never buy, support or in any way further a Microsoft product.
iOS's UI and metro are two peas in the same pod. One uses icons, the other uses tiles. There's more power in the metro interface, but it's all tucked away and you need to be trained to find, but that's not an issue for some. On iOS, it's not there to find, but at least it makes for a very simple interface - More limited, but simpler, which for some is better. However, at least on non-iOS systems you can do obvious things like, plug it in to a computer and copy an mp3 to it just using OS tools. iOS requires iTunes for this most basic function. iTunes is a terrible piece of software, and the crap it drags on to your system with it and hijacks your media settings by default (bonjour service, quicktime, airplay service) makes it completely unacceptable as a medium just to copy your music to your device. The iTunes requirement make iOS less simple than Android or Win8.
If you were walking down a street with him and found $10 on the sidewalk, Gates is the kind of person who would say, "Let me track down the rightful owner of this" and then pocket the money.
well, assuming this happened in the US, and speaking statistically, he's most likely to be the rightful owner
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
Given a choice, ios or Android are far better. Probably hard boiled pig shit would be better than another dose of WinCE5.
WinRT should never have been born.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
At the time the Surface went on sale, remember:
1. The nifty keyboards cost $100 or $150 extra, putting it on par with the iPad 3.
2. The iPad 3 had 2048x1536 display resolution, the Surface had 1366x768. You can easily see the difference, you don't have to be an Apple fan.
3. The iPad 2 was still on sale, at a significant discount, so it undercut the Surface on price but had a huge application market.
4. The Windows App Store for Surface had nothing compelling.
After being mortally wounded by Microsoft, Be drove the last nail into their own coffin themselves: they failed to open source the code base, thus guaranteeing that whatever is/was good about it is now permanently relegated to some deep sedimentary layer of the internet instead of being vibrant and influential as some claim it should be.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.