Microsoft Surface Sales May Exceed 1 Million in Q4
Microsoft said to have halved production of tablet.
Microsoft's Surface RT tablet is expected to exceed sales of more than a million units during the fourth quarter.
"We see estimated sales of 1.3 million" in the quarter, Rhoda Alexander, an analyst at IHS iSuppli, said. The fourth quarter has a few weeks left before 2013's Q1 period arrives. "I would be surprised to see it much above that."
Due to the Surface RT model launching on October 26 -- well into the fourth quarter since it commenced -- sales of over a million for the tablet would have been carried out in around two months.
However, Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton said in a research note that Microsoft is expected to sell less than a million units during the December quarter. Initial Surface RT orders sent to Asia suppliers a month back "were really aggressive," but those numbers weren't "borne out."
Microsoft's projections for Surface's commercial performance, meanwhile, is said to have missed initial expectations by a considerable margin, consequently leading to reports suggesting the software giant reducing production of the device by half.
Surface's Pro model, which delivers the complete Windows 8 experience, is scheduled for a January 2013 launch.

Must return to Indar now
Shipping and selling are different things...
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/iPad-4-Mini-Apple-Sales-tablet,19548.html
Must return to Indar now
Shipping and selling are different things...
MS cuts its Surface orders in half....
Windows Phone 8 is doing badly... nobody cares...
MS is in trouble...
Until now, all the iPads Apple has shipped were eventually sold as well
Their sales volumes look indeed anecdotic compared to the Galaxy S3 / Note and iPhone figures, but if you look back at where they come from, it's a big achievement: they managed to reverse the trend and escape from the negative spiral they were caught in. I guess we will only be able to judge over a longer period of time...
Anyway, I don't think the surface RT has a bright future, and the PRO version which looks appealing from a functional perspective will have to face heavy concurrence from other manufacturers of Windows 8 devices. Still not a big problem as Microsoft isn't probably looking for the hardware sales revenue: their focus is to restore their OS market share and the surface devices are here to cover their back if the OEMs fail to produce the products the market demands. Their efforts will probably pay ... but later than sooner.
Dear Santa " If you get a MS surface, I will b1tch you and your reindeers"
Once the Surface was officially announced with its price I knew it was going to be a huge disaster (flop) for Microsoft. They cannot compete with Android and Apple at their price point. They had to deeply subsidize the cost.
This reminds me of RIM and their Playbook. One day one of their announcement I told all my colleagues it was going to crash and burn and it did exactly that. Way overpriced for a new player in the space. Microsoft just repeated it.
This is why the Entertainment and Devices Division over the past decade has an operating income of
-$3.55 Billion (not adjusted for inflation).
Good job Microsoft! You pissed off your laptop and desktop base with Windows 8 to push very little units for Windows 8 Phones and Surface.
Only with a setup like this, will we see a benefit of having the Metro UI and Desktop UI in one operating system.
why would you buy an overpriced 7" micro-tablet in order to plug it into a keyboard mouse multi-monitor setup? ...or is this supposed to be Star Trek in 2013?
yes! This is what I want too!
Give me something portable that can do some things on the go, but can also be a power house when I need it to be!
Not quite, but in the final 3 months of 2012, they will over 1/4 million per day.
Surface RT and Pro were DOA with their prices.
becuase x86 has to much legacy and is kind of a power hog, intel is supposedly putting out a 10-13 watt ivy bridge which will be awesome but if they released a tablet with x86 now it'd need to have a battery like a current laptop battey size or bigger and have the life of on so it'd be crucified in review because its big heavy 2000+ mah battery would only last a few hours of use. i hope hte new efficient ivybridge chips combined with low power gpu can make an x86 tablet possible though with a battery life of at least 4-5 hours
How long did it take any of the Android tablets to take hold? It took many many tries to even break 500k sales over a year period. This is actually a pretty strong start.
No regrets.
Also, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was really interested, but just decided to skip it and wait until the 2nd gen devices are out. The Tegra 3 SoC is unimpressive, in addition to the "meh" resolution. If the "leaked" 2nd gen specs turn out to be accurate, I'm almost certainly going to pick up the 2nd gen Surface Pro.
There are some very low powered Atom processors now that may work out.