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Microsoft's Surface Revenue Drops By $285M (26%) (computerworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Computerworld:
Revenue generated by Microsoft's Surface hardware during the March quarter was down 26% from the same period the year before, the company said yesterday as it briefed Wall Street. For the quarter, Surface produced $831 million, some $285 million less than the March quarter of 2016, for the largest year-over-year dollar decline ever... The revenue decline "indicates that the aging product needs a refresh badly," Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates, wrote in a note to clients today. "Price cutting and competing vendors' products will continue to create declines until new product is released, rumored for later this year." Microsoft threw cold water on any significant changes to the Surface line before June, forecasting that the current quarter will also post a revenue decline.
Computers with Windows 7 are still in high demand, release the Surface Book Windows 7 Edition and watch profits go up.
Someone is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
- The Surface Line is more about making windows trendy and sexy in an era of iPads and multifunction laptops.....The surface line has pushed other manufacturers that sell windows machines to innovate and deploy more modern products (even Asus has been experimenting with combining tablet display technology and form factor with windows, Dell has been investing more in their small tablet line).
- Since the whole point of the surface line is to cater to Microsoft's affluent customers and push the state of windows mobile computers, it is more important that Microsoft deliver new products well and perfectly than to delivery frequently. The last several refreshes of the line have gone well....the Surface Studio, Pro 4, and book have all done their job....if there is any complaints, it is that Microsoft pushed releasing the hardware before all the bugs were worked out or before newer hardware could be slimmed down enough in size. And, the book has already gotten a modest boost with the recent performance base release.
So what if sales for the current quarter are trending down as a result of Microsoft taking longer to release a Surface pro 5 or book 2? Isn't waiting until they can deliver properly what we want them to do?
The revenue decline "indicates that the aging product needs a refresh badly,"
A refresh isn't going to fix what's wrong with the Surface.
The entire concept of the product itself is the thing that's stale.
Just adding more RAM, or a bigger disk, or some such thing, is not going to excite the market enough to make up that 26% drop. That kind of drop in one year means that there's a general loss of interest in the entire concept of the product.
Its the classical "why upgrade if this one works fine"?
Microsoft did come out with a fine product this time (I run Linux on mine though).
Microsoft has to pull an Apple (make either attractive gimmicks or real hardware improvements) to get people to upgrade.
I just wish Windows wasn't a System-As-A-Service Cloud-Shit OS, I'd be happy to pay extra $100 ( or even $400) and get Windows no strings attached.
Fuck the Cloud business models.
linux is so good it did not even catch your "ans" typo
Who care, MS Stock is UP and they beat their first quarter earnings estimate. MS is making money on Office, Azure, Windows, and annual support agreements. The surface was an experiment that some people love but more people hate. I am in the hater camp for both the MS Surface and the new Mac Book Pro. Someone make some decent hardware, please.... pretty please. For full disclosure, the last device was a Lenovo Yoga. The Yoga is 80% to getting to a MacBook Pro. Screen is too shiny, the right shift key is in the wrong spot, and the touchpad has the stupid line for left click on one side and right click on the other. Using a Yoga as a Tablet with Windows 10 is a lackluster user experience, just give me the iPad.
You're wrong Microsoft. The device is fine, it does not need a revamp. On the other hand, your imaginary perception of the world does. You prefer to be conveniently rejecting a thought that the market has been packed with a variety of devices like yours over a number of years, people are happy with what they currently have and they simply don't need new devices anymore. Of course, this breaks your idealistic picture of an average, always-needy customer and shatters your dreams of (highly exaggerated) sales targets but it's high time you realised that the tablet boom is over and you won't get same sales levels ever again.
"Microsoft's Surface Revenue Drops By $285M (26%)"
Of course, because it's a craptastic piece of shite that costs too much and barely makes a good cutting board. Nobody I've ever known has owned one and I've never seen one used in a business setting in the wild. Not once, even during all the different contracts I spent pretending to work for Microsoft.
Oh, I'm sure they're out there, just like are probably people still clinging to their Zunes, "squirting" songs at each other and clapping like goobers when the transfer actually succeeds.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Q1 2017 Mac Sales: $7.244 BEELION.
Surface Sales: $831 MEELION.
Yep, peeps be lovin' them some Surface kit, LOL!
Microsoft just needs to sell us a 3:2 small bezel normal-hinged laptop like they teased 3 years ago: https://twitter.com/sephr/stat...
With no apps you get no users
Those nice cheap plastic big thick and heavy case with fans in a sea of plastic and +20 programs of malware with mechanical drives that took 4 minutes to boot and had grainy dark terrible screens were what Pcs were in 2011. SHIT.
The surface booted in seconds, thin, ultra portable, great IPS, amazing battery, no shitware.
Outside of Slashdot yes they did make billions for Microsoft and were popular in the x86 line. No really I own one as I used to mock them after being on Slashdot.org assumed they were behind horrible because other people who never used them said so etc. I own one now.
Today we have the Dell XPS ultrabook line, Yoga from Lenovo, and others and a few with great screens and SSDs/NVME so times are changing. Microsoft's goal was to make some money which they still are, but not to let Apple and Android carve out the whole PC market as they focus on COST COST COST savings from the Great Recession which temporarily helped sales but long term was hurting the brand. It served it's purpose.
Also MS is selling its Surface Book which is eating at it's own sales as well.
http://saveie6.com/
Microsoft mobile. New synonym of 'moron': Microsoft.
its taking a gnu...
The performance is fantastic. Granted, we have i7 and 16 gigs of ram. But, all MS Office apps work instantly.
Ok, one comment, what was it Slashdot was all afire about with new MacBook Pros last year, hmm...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
no shitware.
Really? Did you install linux? Or did you manage to turn off the data collection? Just curious.
Where I work, it turns out the Surface Pro 4 got chosen as the de-facto standard issue PC for all new hires, moving forward, unless they request a Mac instead. (We're a shop with about a 50/50 Mac and Windows PC mix. Lots of creative types work for us and often feel more comfortable or confident working on a Mac, so we give them that option. Other groups like Finance require Windows for the accounting software we run.)
Our whole I.T. group was issued Surface Pro 4 setups to use first, so we could get a real, hands-on evaluation of them for a while before recommending them to anyone else in the company. My experience is, as long as you don't totally cheap out and buy the lowest-end configurations -- you completely forget you're not on a modern, mid-range performance desktop PC when it's docked with a standard monitor, keyboard and mouse.
When I have to use mine on the go? I dislike the compromises it makes. The pencil stylus works pretty well but it's not that useful for most of what I do. For I.T., I need to remote into serves and make changes or update inventory spreadsheets or respond to emails and help tickets in the web-based system. None of that is made any better with the pencil. So that means using the keyboard cover with it, and that thing stinks. Even if it had better keys and feel, it's also just not pleasant how you have to flip back the plastic kickstand and use the flimsy cover on a flat surface to emulate a traditional hinged notebook. Doesn't work well if you're really trying to use it in your laptop instead of on a table. And the whole unit, with its plastic casing, just feels junky compared to the aluminum used with something like Apple's iPad. Not enough USB ports on a Surface Pro 4 either.
But the thing is? A lot of our employees WILL find the pencil really useful. They use Adobe apps and other drawing packages regularly. And others are more concerned about carrying around the thinnest, lightest-weight machine possible, so they like it too. Even the SP4's power adapter is really small and light compared to the bricks they want you to carry with you with many other machines.
And lastly? Just because MS makes it, they can do the type of integration that has always given Apple the edge over everyone else until now. They can push out firmware updates or driver updates as part of the normal Windows Update process, ensuring it stays current without users having to seek the updates out on a support web page or use clunky 3rd. party updater utilities that are known to screw up.
who wants to pay macbook pro prices for a piece of shit windows tablet?
They need to make it Zune compatible.
Much like Apple and Mac's Microsoft set the bar for other PC makers and then decided to sit it out. Not sure now what Microsoft's plan is given that it plans some sort of cheaper cloud version device. Certainly better and cheaper alternatives to the Surface come to mind and while I give credit to Microsoft in making the Surface line. But they sort of flaked out on continuing its development and making improvements. Maybe in the end the costs, design and size ended up being more negatives than Microsoft thought? I know a few who bought a Surface Pro but were disappointed in them after using for a few months. Too much tablet than laptop, and the Surfacebook was just too expensive.
The used Surface market is pretty strong. Compulsive upgraders sell off their old models at a low price, which gives more cost-conscious consumers a choice between a new, expensive one, or a used cheap one. But Microsoft only makes money off the new sales, not the secondhand market. The net effect is that Surface revenue is depressed. The same happens with any new product line - you get a sales spike at launch, when the current model is the only game in town, and then it falls to sustainable levels as new models have to compete with the old one on the used market.
As for myself, I'm quite happy with my secondhand Surface Pro 2. Cost me about a third of what a new Surface Pro 4 would, and it does everything I've tried to use it for.
and transforming into a company like Apple. They've more or less failed at that. 23% is a huge number in the corporate world. Somebody in Microsoft is freaking out over that I'm sure. Another quarter or two like that and their senior management will kill the line. Microsoft doesn't spend billions on branding, which come to think of it is probably why they can't hang with Apple.
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How about actually offering the Surface in some of what you call "Tier 2" markets , Microsoft ? You still cannot buy a Surface in South Africa , for example, but you can buy Apple's full line. Don't cry about missed revenue when you haven't even covered the market.