Surface Sales: Even Worse Than We Thought
December 6th, 2012 - 5:04 am
Ouch:
While some see potential in Microsoft’s Surface tablet, most industry watchers appear to have written off the device at this point. Orders were reportedly cut in half following a slow launch, and Microsoft’s (MSFT) debut slate has been hammered time and time again by reviewers and analysts. The latest to pile on is Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, which estimates that when all is said and done, Microsoft will have sold fewer than 1 million Surface tablets in the slate’s debut quarter.
Apple sold 300,000 iPads on the very first day — and that was almost three years ago, when the tablet market simply didn’t exist until Apple conjured it up.
I really don’t get Microsoft. I know their products have always been basically crap and traditionally they’ve used their market dominance to force their crap products down people’s throats. But they’re not stupid. Their market share has been eroding for a decade, giving them plenty of time to change course. And yet they largely haven’t–their products are still basically crap. And now that they can’t force people to buy anyway, their sales strategy is…what, exactly?
“they’re not stupid”
Yes, they are.
…their sales strategy is…what, exactly?
Buy our shit, we’re Microsoft.
I’ve said this before, the Surface will fail because Micrsoft is unwilling to commit. If they’d actually made the Surface a tablet instead of a hugely scaled down laptop, they might be somewhere. But if I want an easily portable device with quick access to the apps (while standing or on the sofa for ex.) the keyboard and pen are superfluous and annoying. And Windows needs the keyboard and pen to work. If I want a portable computer that uses keyboards and mice, I’ll get get a laptop.
That said, does this fail-whale only include the Surface RT? Or is the Surface Pro also tanking?
>That said, does this fail-whale only include the Surface RT? Or is the Surface Pro also tanking?
Surface Pro hasn’t been released for sale yet.
I have a slightly different take: all of the above criticism may well be correct, but I think there is a more fundamental issue — lack of retail availablity. I don’t know how MS expects to sell these things if they’re not available in the stores where people shop for computers.
Have any of you actually seen a Surface tablet in person? I haven’t, and I live and work in Silicon Valley. My TV is saturated with MS Surface commercials, but none of the local consumer electronics stores (Fry’s, Best Buy) carry the Surface. They carry Windows 8 laptops. They carry the ASUS Win8 tablet. But they don’t carry the Surface. (It’s not sold-out, they don’t carry it all)
I know MS said they were going to setup pop-up stores in malls, but I haven’t seen any (although I haven’t gone out of my way to look). But that misses the point, when people want to buy a computer or tablet, they don’t go to ‘the mall’, they go to the consumer electronics stores.