Slashdot Mirror
Early Surface Sales Pitiful
Nerval's Lobster writes "Microsoft has earned $853 million from sales of its Surface tablets, according to the company's annual Form 10-K filed with the SEC. That's a bit of a disaster, to put it bluntly. Earlier estimates put Surface sales at roughly 1.5 million units; the $853 million figure reinforces that projection. By comparison, Apple sold 14.6 million iPads in its last quarter alone. Adding insult to injury, Microsoft spent quite a bit producing and marketing Surface. The Windows division's 'cost of revenue increased $1.8 billion, reflecting a $1.6 billion increase in product costs associated with Surface and Windows 8, including a charge for Surface RT inventory adjustments of approximately $900 million,' read the Form 10-K. 'Sales and marketing expenses increased $1.0 billion or 34 percent, reflecting an $898 million increase in advertising costs associated primarily with Windows 8 and Surface.' Overall, Microsoft's Windows division earned $19.2 billion in its fiscal 2013."
I haven't had a BSOD in years. The only time I reboot my machine is for updates. Windows used to be unstable, but more recently I find it rock solid. I wonder if all the problems I had in the past with Windows was due to cheap/faulty hardware and bad drivers, and had nothing to do with the OS itself. I don't think I've ever seen any of my Windows 7/8 machines crash at all (certain applications will crash but not the OS). Windows 8, which many people complain about is actually quite nice, if you can just get yourself past the UI. It's a little bit jarring to have that start screen show up, but really I haven't noticed it at all. I just treat it like a really big start menu in Windows 7. Hit start, type name of program, and run it. It's really easy to start commonly run programs because the target is so big. I no longer have to have precise aim like I did with the quicklaunch bar, and I don't have to have screen real estate taken up by the quicklaunch icons (which I generally have about 15-20 of).
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The Pro version isn't selling at all.
It's a pity, because I've got a Pro and it's a pretty kickass machine. I agree the RT doesn't make sense, but the Pro is well thought out.
Historically, the Xbox division is still not profitable. It's net -$3B from 2001
Remember when the early XBOX sales looks so bad they thought it might drag Microsoft under?
Except the early Xbox sales where great. From a 2001 article http://uk.gamespot.com/news/microsoft-reports-strong-xbox-sales-2829778 "Xbox sold out as soon as we launched, and we're selling systems as fast as we can produce them. More than 100,000 units a week are being delivered to retailers, so game players are likely to find Xbox systems throughout the holiday season. With one of the best launch lineups ever, I understand why Xbox is the most sought-after gift for the holiday." "
Not sure why people are trying to rewrite history.
They will never ever make money on the XBOX, by the time they start making money on the console it's time to replace the console with a newer version, and that's after they dragged the refresh cycle out 3 years longer than the previous cycles.
If I was a shareholder I would be livid, that money could have been put into share purchases or dividends for far more return to the owners.
> The walled garden has yet to reach the Apple desktop, which is still a POSIX compliant UNIX
MacOS is a proprietary GUI based user environment with it's own history, culture, and expectations quite different and distinct from Unix.
Only a vanishingly small minority of MacOS users care or even know that their shiny happy thing is a Unix underneath.
Apple is as much a Unix vendor as Tivo is.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You need to update your propaganda. Apple no longer has the lead in tablet market share.
Has nothing to do with propaganda, or even who has the lead. However, it has everything to do with why the Surface RT failed utterly. The UI is confusing and ugly, and the flexibility (read: app support) is simply not there. Battery life is a big question mark, and half the internal storage ("disk") space on the low-end model is eaten by stuff that the consumer sees no use for (the recovery partition, the bloated-as-hell OS, etc.)
Replace "iPad" with "Android" if it makes your phallus turgid - machts nichts, my point still stands. Th3e RT sucks because it fails to meet the requirements I outlined up there.
If you can prove me wrong, please do so.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?