Microsoft Aims to Sell Millions Of Surface Tablets in 1st Year
Ballmer is dreaming big with the Surface.
Microsoft surprised everyone when it unveiled two own-brand Surface tablets last month. Since then, it's become quite clear that Microsoft has invested an awful lot of time and money into the project and isn't playing around. So, just how well is Microsoft expecting the Surface to do?
According to Mary Jo Foley, Microsoft told attendees at Worldwide Partner Keynote in Toronto that the company expects to sell several million Surface units in the next year. "I actually thought I heard Ballmer say 'a few millions,' with an 's,'" Foley wrote on her All About Microsoft Blog.
The fact that Microsoft is so ambitious is no surprise. After all, the company took a pretty big risk with its hardware partners in developing its own device. Since the company unveiled the Surface, many have been asking if Microsoft has lost faith in its partners. Another theory is that it was trying to give them an incentive to get to work on better devices of their own. And, now that the company has taken this step with tablets, there's questions as to whether they'll make the same move with Windows Phone. Steve Ballmer has said the company is concentrating on Surface for now, but didn't rule out the possibility of a Microsoft-brand Windows Phone.
Foley believes such lofty ambitions tell us that Microsoft is firmly in the hardware business and doesn't plan to go anywhere anytime soon. Of course, the company is no stranger to hardware, already manufacturing the likes of the Xbox, a plethora of mice and keyboards, and, at one point, the Zune. Still, it will be interesting to see how Redmond does with tablets. And who knows, if things go well with the surface, the company may build a phone, too.

The big thing is the functionality. You're not paying for a stripped down, angry birds playing iOS platform, this is a full fledged OS we're talking about, for better and worse. Taking your MS office on the go in a proper, familiar platform, people will enjoy. Getting a malware infection and having to figure out how to reformat your tablet? Ehhhh. . . not so much.
Although i'm not exactly "excited" about the tablet craze upcoming and current, It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Tablets don't have the horsepower I expect to do what I want to do, but I might end up with one to remote into my home PC for when i'm on the go, that IS a tantalizing thought.
In the end, it will come down to functionality (which is lacking in iOS) Stability (which is often lacking in early MS OS builds, think vista.) and having the proper hardware for the job. With M$ putting out the hardware, they control all 3 of those factors and it's all on them, for better or worse.
So selling millions annually doesn't sound as much.
The big thing is the functionality. You're not paying for a stripped down, angry birds playing iOS platform, this is a full fledged OS we're talking about, for better and worse. Taking your MS office on the go in a proper, familiar platform, people will enjoy. Getting a malware infection and having to figure out how to reformat your tablet? Ehhhh. . . not so much.
Although i'm not exactly "excited" about the tablet craze upcoming and current, It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Tablets don't have the horsepower I expect to do what I want to do, but I might end up with one to remote into my home PC for when i'm on the go, that IS a tantalizing thought.
In the end, it will come down to functionality (which is lacking in iOS) Stability (which is often lacking in early MS OS builds, think vista.) and having the proper hardware for the job. With M$ putting out the hardware, they control all 3 of those factors and it's all on them, for better or worse.
You have some good points. I agree, IOS is a locked-down, very limited OS. Android, while not nearly as locked down as IOS, is still very limited in functionality compared to a desktop OS. Tablets are currently a strange breed, they are not quite a PC and not quite phone. If the future of desktop PC's is to go the way of the tablet (albeit they will look much different) then Microsoft could certainly be on to something.
Historically though, Microsoft has tried the same thing and failed bad. Taking a fully-fledged desktop OS and trying to make it work on a tablet by only adding "touch" was a huge fail. At least this time they are incorporating the Metro UI for tablet, and the user can also access the full OS if desired.
If Microsoft is successful, the future will be in making an OS where ALL the complex functionality works seamless on a tablet. In other words, Metro UI will be all that there is on tablet ... but it will include everything that currently exists on a desktop PC in a seamless manner. As it stands, I see Surface Tablets as being merely a transition device for the future.
Surface RT will fail because it has nothing on Android tablets or the iPad. It will only have 1366x768, Tegra 3 (which will be almost a year old when RT is released), it will have relatively few apps to begin with, but it will be as expensive as the iPad and top-of-the-line Android tablets. It's a brand new software ecosystem, and a user interface that failed to materialize phone sales in Windows Phone 7 (and probably won't in WP8 either).
Industry badly needs to introduce new terminology called PM -> Personal Mobile which is nothing like PC we use today.
Surface RT, though, does not have the desktop, so it has almost nothing on android/ios slates.
I commend MS for pushing the envelope. I actually though Apple would have done this first with the retinal display, but they let us sorts down. If this works half as well as they expect I see a lot of companies getting into power-tablets, which can only be a good thing for all users.
remember that MS's largest consumers are businesses, and there are a lot of businesses who have been waiting for a Win8 tablet just for the security/domain features. The Surface will be a huge sell to this crowd because you have full office on both platforms, and the x86 will allow you to use real programs like quickbooks, database/invintory software, and several other enterprise style input programs. You are right that nobody is going to be running Photoshop on these, but you are so short sighted to think that a company facing the decision of spending millions of $$ in developing iOS and Android apps, compared to dropping $700 per device, and be able to reuse the existing software.
All the same I think Millions is a bit optomistic for the 1st year, because there is going to be a lot of skepticism for people moving to win8. But I think once people realize that Metro is here to stay then they will see the numbers start climbing very quickly in year 2.
Either way, if I was in the market for a tablet and had the choice between Android, iOS, and Win8 x86 I would choose Win8 every time. Put the choice of Win8RT in there... well then Android may stand a chance, but the inclusion of office may win me over to RT if it came to such a decision.
~$700-1200 for the i5 version (a bit pricy, but you get a lot for your money)
~$500-900 for the ARM version (way too high in my opinion)
We do not know exact pricing as the product is not out yet, but these should be in the right ball part at least from low to high end versions.
They had a phone...
It seems like only a few years ago that we were hearing Office was going to die at the hands of open-source apps such as StarOffice. MSFT comes out with Sharepoint and, wham, puts a stop to that talk. Reminds me of the phrase "reports of my demise are premature." MSFT and Apple are both huge, and will be for the foreseeable future. Apple in the consumer market, MSFT in the business enterprise.
MS never designed/built the phone though. Only the OS. They relied on hardware manufacturers for the devices.
Though I thought the rumor of MS actually building their own phone was shot-down already?
FAIL! Windows7 tablets have been around for about 2 years. They run the same software TODAY that Win8 tablets will run tomorrow. At $1200~1600 each, they are not exactly flying off the shelves... they are regulated mostly as mail-order devices and consumers are NOT buying them.
Windows8 x86 tablets are not going to change that much... If the whole point is to run desktop software. And the Metro software base is weak and the WART tablets are useless.
There are not going to be any if but a few WART brands besides MS. With them charging $75~80 per licence, the profit for the partners is $0. There is no reason to bother... many have already canceled and/or pushing their Android tablets. (cough HP)
Yes, the MS Tablet looks nice... its what you can do when you have the money to build something like that. MS will make it for a year or so... sell a thousands of the x86 models.... maybe 500,000 of the WART ones... then give up and shut down the line.
Welcome to ZUNE 3.0
Buy an iPhone 3Gs or 4 or an Android today, everything works tomorrow... and will handle OS upgrades.