Now That's a Flop II: Electronic Boogaloo

Jim Dalrymple has better figures than my back-of-the-envelope numbers from this morning:

Microsoft made $853 million in revenue from the Surface and sold an estimated 1.7 million devices in eight months, according to GeekWire. That’s less than the $900 write-off the company took on the Surface two weeks ago.

Let’s put this in perspective:

•Apple sold 3 million iPads in three days last November
•Apple sold 14.6 million iPads in the last quarter
•Apple sold 57 million iPads since Microsoft began selling the Surface

Sucks to be Microsoft.

The irony is it shouldn’t suck to be Microsoft. As I’ve been saying for a year or more, MS already has a perfectly good mobile OS in Windows Phone. All they had to do was rename it “Windows Mobile” or whatever, scale it up to the ten-inch form, and — presto! — an instant ecosystem for developers and consumers alike.

Instead, Ballmer insisted on Windows RT for tablet-y tablets, and Windows 8 for less tablet-y tablets, but neither was a truly touch-based OS. Meanwhile, Windows Phone remains the only child of a single parent, Nokia.

I realize Ballmer did what he thought was is necessary to protect the Windows/Office franchise from being cannibalized by tablets — but that battle was essentially lost on April 3, 2010.