Microsoft Makes Another "Nearly Sold Out" Claim For the Surface Line

Microsoft made some confident sounding claims about sales of its first-generation Surface tablets before it became clear that the tablets weren't actually selling very well. So make what you will of the company's claim that the second version is "close to selling out." As the linked article points out, the company has "fallen short of offering any real explanation as to just how “close” to selling out the Surface 2 and Pro 2 really are – nor have they indicated how many were on hand to order in the first place."

Comments

Who cares about?

[faragon]

Metro interfece is nice, but useless without software.

Re:Who cares about?

[rjstanford]

They are still bitter that they had the idea for a tablet long before Apple, but when they announced it, it was to a big yawn.

Having the idea is, sadly, the easy part (and Microsoft was far from the first - check out Sun's future doodles from a few decades ago). Its getting all the pesky details right and having a solid combination of hardware, software, and demand that's tricky. That's what Apple is far better at than the current Microsoft.

Re:Who cares about?

[Capt.Albatross]

Microsoft usually can see the train coming long before it arrives.

In my reading of its history, Microsoft has spent a good deal of its existence catching up with one train or another. Two notable examples: GUIs and the internet.

Re:Who cares about?

[linebackn]

Microsoft usually can see the train coming long before it arrives.

In my reading of its history, Microsoft has spent a good deal of its existence catching up with one train or another. Two notable examples: GUIs and the internet.

That is what it looks like in retrospect, but to put it metaphorically, Microsoft was already on a different train hoping it would take them where THEY wanted to go.

In the case of the Internet, they were on the train headed for making their proprietary MSN service the one true ultimate information service. I think they kind of hoped the Internet would just go away, but that didn't happen. :)

In the case of the GUI, they were already on the train of supporting and enhancing existing DOS software. It wasn't even entirely in their hands as they weren't the ones producing the hardware (How would you do a GUI when you were expected to support IBM monotext video cards?)

And now they are on they are on the tablet craze train, when outside of Apple, that is not where the rest of the world is going.

Re:Who cares about?

[mysidia]

So what you're saying is that MS chose to make a shitty product and launch it prematurely, while Apple chose to wait until the right hardware was available and then design a suitable OS for it?

Yes, but Apple waited a lot longer than they needed to -- probably in order to get it "perfect", in Steves' eyes, and they made a good first impression.

While Apple was wasting much time; engineering the most aesthetically pure tablet they could muster, and worrying about very small improvements in size and weight --- MS was busy making and then trying to fix Vista.

Netbooks and Ultrabooks were becoming popular at the time --- the very low power CPU options were available, multitouch, and all the tech required to make a tablet.

Hell.. TechCrunch was working on the Crunchpad (before one of their vendors double-crossed them, stole their intellectual property, and went to develop JooJoo pad on their own)

Microsoft had plenty of time and opportunity to adapt their Tablet PC to a lighter design, improve the touch experience, and release a tablet faster than Apple, which would be a credible offering; and, by the way, cannibalize much of Apple's prospects in the tablet market.

The fact of the matter is... Microsoft must have been asleep at the switch.

Frankly, there should have been firings within their management team, for not seeing this.

Microsoft failed to recognize the problems that had made their Tablet PC not so successful, and failed to recognize changes in available technology, that would enable them to pivot, and change their product into a successful one satisfying customer needs.

And they failed to execute on the opportunity: that should have been visible plain as day, to anyone with any vision in that company.

Re:Who cares about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forget Sun, try Palm! The palm pilot was like, half smartphone, half tablet. It's just that the technology was immature at the time.

I don't believe a word they say

[DavidinAla]

Given the fact that Microsoft has shown a willingness to badly mislead on this subject, the company has zero credibility about it. It's possible they're being completely honest and accurate about it this time, but since we've seen them lie (or "mislead" to put it charitably) before, how can we know? This is common for many, many companies, but when a company starts down this road, we lose the ability to trust anything they say in the future.

Re:We can trust them

[asmkm22]

I'm actually getting really tired of this type of comment. I see it pretty much every time a company or government is involved in the story. Yeah I get it; you can't trust them. Can we move on now and stop fishing for easy mod points with obvious posts?

Re:We can trust them

[spire3661]

We keep repeating it because other morons keep forgetting it.

Re:really?

[RespekMyAthorati]

Consumers are dumb. They'll say "oohh, they're almost sold out! I need to get one while I can!"

That's what MS believes. I don't think it works anymore.

Re:Oh, you guys...

[David Gerard]

CUPERTINO, Transylvania, Friday — After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with iTunes in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil as a corporate policy.

"Fuck it," said Zombie Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to a Windows phone. Ha! Ha!"

Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole.”

"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my ‘spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."

 

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