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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.

4 of 147 comments (clear)

  1. Not a big deal by mattmarlowe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

    1. Re: Not a big deal by drinkypoo · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I hope for your sake and for the rest of the democrats that you do some good soul searching prior to 2018 & 2020... otherwise you will be trounced again.

      The DNC is still up to the same old tricks, refusing to support genuinely leftists candidates in favor of centrist tools of the corporatocracy. So yeah, expect a repeat.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  2. Of course by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "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...
  3. Surface came out in crappy OEM market by Billly+Gates · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.