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."
In other words, Microsoft spent more money on advertising the Surface than they took in selling it.
Is the fundamental issue that people are sick of using shitty computers with shitty locked down versions of windows all day at work, so they don't want more of the same bullshit for their personal devices?
SURELY NOT!!!!!
I remember a time when Microsoft had a larger vision for surface.
God spoke to me
Microsoft... There's a name you don't hear every day... They're still around?
All those ads with people dancing around snapping covers on and off - opening and closing weren't enough to evangelize the masses as to the virtues of the technology?!?
As much as I hate Microsoft - it's sad to say - that the [very, very] few people who I know who actually had a Surface had nothing but RAVE reviews about them. The summary was: "Size/weight of an iPad - but with a real keyboard. I could take it to meetings, and actually run Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. I could actually take notes with the keyboard - and not some "add-on" iPad type keyboard which made the iPad as big and bulky as a small laptop or netbook".
So in short - it was a real "productivity" device - not like tablet, which I still don't think is really good for anything but *light* web browsing and watching movies on a screen, the size of what we used to watch them on in the 70's.
Remember when the early XBOX sales looks so bad they thought it might drag Microsoft under?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I took one look at the intro video and was blown away, I thought that Surface was as cool as dammit. But then I assumed that it would be priced at Microsoft prices. Instead they tried to sell it at Apple prices. Had they, from the get go, offered iPad coolness at a Windows price, I think they might have made a go of it.
The Surface is a wonderful device that I love to use. My seventeen kids all fight over the privilege to use it and they all want to replace their iPads with a Surface. They're just flying off the shelves, and the local stores can't keep them in stock. I have to drive 200 miles to buy more. At work our productivity increased 1,022% when we replaced all of our ipad and android tablets with the Surface. It's so cute and convenient, I just can't keep my hands off of it.
There, did it for you. Cut and paste as necessary.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking 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.
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.
Jeff Atwood (of CodingHorror, StackOverflow fame) praised the Surface RT:
I can't even remember the last time I was this excited about a computer.
Microsoft's view was that the iPad and similar Android tablets were fine for media consumption but were really lacking when it came to creating. Having a physical keyboard without adding significant weight or bulk was a killer feature in their mind.
A lot of people felt that Microsoft did an excellent job in designing the keyboard. A key point they missed though is that once you stick a keyboard on a tablet like that there's not much distinction between it and a small laptop. So why not just get a laptop?
One of the nice things about a tablet is that you don't need an flat surface available in order to use it. Microsoft's own Surface commercials show a bunch of people sitting around a table. A tablet that requires a desk in order to take advantage of one its key features isn't going to set the world on fire.
Seriously?
From my experiences, and talking with friends, we ALL pretty much refer to the toilet as "the Library"...we all catch up on our reading while sitting on the can.
I figured it was just a guy thing, since most women I know have no clue why myself and my other male friends keep an assortment of reading material in the bathroom.
Don't get me wrong, it isn't being irregular or constipated, just that it does take more than 30 seconds to sit and shit...so, might as well catch up on reading while in there. And for so many of my married friends, it is a good opportunity for a little me time from the wife, as that that is the one place and time they won't try to follow them around.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
And they all 100% suck.
Apple locks you in - you do what Apple allows and forces, including some of the crappiest written software ever imagined (iTunes). That also forces you to pollute your desktop PC with more crap (iTunes).
Android & Apple hideous development environments. Seriously, yes they can do anything, so can machine language code written in hex, that is not the point. The point is Apple runs this proprietary disgusting mix of object oriented and non-object oriented legacy crap. Android uses a semi decent language (potentially) but surrounds it with a hideous never considered anything but command line crap they call a UI. It depends on a buggy, poorly designed open source IDE
Microsoft has a decent language, the best UI in existence, and arguably the best IDE, but you cant run anything but Internet explorer, you cant deploy it conveniently to your own machine, and certainly not to anyone else's. It's a 'me too' clone with all the bad parts and none of the good parts.
They let the people worried about money get in the way of making a good product, and the result is failure (serves them right).
Gates made MS at a time when he ignored the bean counters and made Windows despite OS/2, to be better, not more profitable. The profit comes automatically. When you force profit in over being a good product, the surface is what you end up with. R.I.P. MS, the good you will be missed.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
At least with laptops, I can stick Linux on them when their version of windows gets too bogged down with viruses.