Surface, The Microsoft Tablet-PC: Fail?

Updates

December 11, 2012: update on the Surface --

“The public reaction to Surface has been exciting to see. We’ve increased production and are expanding the ways in which customers can interact with, experience and purchase Surface,” Microsoft Surface general manager Panos Panay said in a news release.

All well and good. Unless you read this piece from Dealnews, which cited a report that Surface sales are well below expectations: 

"According to estimates from Boston-based brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton, Microsoft is on track to sell between 500,000 to 600,000 Surface RT tablets in the December quarter — far below its expected sales of 2 to 3 million."

The Dealnews story noted that part of the problem might be the limited availability of the Surface, which it seems Microsoft is on its way to addressing with its Tuesday announcement. 

The other issue remains price, according to Dealnews: "And at a time when $199 mainstream tablets are becoming the norm, the Surface RT's high $499 price tag is undoubtedly hurting it."

November 30, 2012: PC or Apple in the corporate world?

• GE moving to Apple, WSJ, January 18, 2012
• Ratio of PCs to Macs sold at levels not seen since the 1990s, BusinessInsider, July 3, 2012
• Apple as the last hope for PC growth in the business place, NY Times, September 10, 2012
• Apple has quietly become the gold standard for computing in the US military; too many sources to link, personal observation after 30 years in the US Air Force; but here is one CNN link
• The movie industry and graphic-based businesses (like advertisers) "all" use Mac OS, LinedIn.com
• I experienced a personal epiphany in 1993, when taking a by-name-invitational tour of the control tower at the Frankfurt (Germany) International Airport: the graphics were all Apple/Mac; the Brits and the Europeans moved to Apple/Mac well before the Americans for creative work; mundane office computing, yes, goes to the PC

November 30, 2012: from a comment at MacRumors.com regarding memory for the Surface:

If it turns out that the Pro starts at 64gb cause that full version of Windows needs 32gb plus the 16gb that Metro needs ...

November 30, 2012: Windows 8 gets a slow start, WSJ. 

While the bulk of the holiday selling season is still ahead, "clearly, Windows 8 did not prove to be the impetus for a sales turnaround some had hoped for," said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD.

November 30, 2012:  The major selling point for the tablet: a) light, compact; b) long battery life. Additional plus: few slots; folks were being weaned from attaching printers, fax machines, hard drives, etc., to their mobile device. The bed may not be the #1 place where one finds an iPad, but it's high on the list. The Surface Pro: a) clunky; b) short battery life; c) being seen more as a computer than a tablet. So, we're moving back to a laptop?  People see it as something for the workplace, not for fun. The iPad is fun.


November 30, 2012: the bad news for Microsoft Surface continues. From MacRumors.com:

The RT version of the Surface officially has an eight hour battery life with some testers finding slightly longer running times, implying that the Surface Pro will feature a battery life of roughly four-and-a-half hours, less than most laptops. This low battery life information comes at a time when Microsoft is seeing poor sales of the Surface RT. A report on Black Friday from Piper Jaffray revealed that the brick and mortar Microsoft stores experienced low Surface sales in comparison to iPad sales at the Apple Store.

There was 47% less foot traffic at the Microsoft (MSFT) outlet than the Apple (AAPL) store. Shoppers bought 17.2 items per hour at the Apple Store and only 3.5 items per hour at the Microsoft Store. All but two of the Microsoft purchases were X-Box games. Shoppers at the Apple Store bought an average of 11 iPads per hour. Despite heavy TV, print and billboard advertising for the new Microsoft Surface tablet, not one was sold sold during the two hours Piper Jaffray spent monitoring that store. Doesn’t bode well for Microsoft’s answer to the iPad.

Original Post

Perhaps it's too early to tell, but from MacRumors.com:

A recent report from Digitimes indicates that Microsoft has reduced its tablet orders and may consider lowering the price of the Surface RT.

The upstream supply chain of Microsoft’s Surface RT has recently seen the tablet’s orders reduced by half, and with other Windows RT-based tablet orders also seeing weak performance, sources from the upstream supply chain believe the new operating system may not perform as well as expected in the market. Microsoft originally expected to ship four million Surface RT devices by the end of 2012, but has recently reduced the orders by half to only two million units. The sources also noted that Microsoft may consider reducing its Surface Pro price to attract more consumers; however, such a decision may put the already awkward relationship between the software giant and notebook vendors in an even worse situation.

The Surface RT is currently available from Microsoft for $499 for the entry level 32GB tablet. 

The Surface Pro will soon be released also; comparing the two. 

By the way, does anyone know what "RT" stands for in Surface RT? I did not and I follow this stuff fairly closely. But here's the answer:

With the launch of the Microsoft Surface, the first computer the company has ever made, comes the launch of the newest flavor of its Windows 8 operating system, Windows RT. And as shoppers eye up the impressive-but-complicated new product, one question is likely to be asked thousands of times in the coming weeks: what does “RT” mean?

Short answer: Nothing, officially. 

Longer answer: Something, kind of.

In Windows 8, software developers wanting to build programs for the system use a set of tools known as Windows Runtime, abbreviated to WinRT (this is, remember, not the same thing as Windows RT). WinRT lets developers create software that can run both on traditional computers that use the kind of processors made by Intel and AMD — basically all the laptops and desktops in the world today — as well as on devices running on chips based on a different framework, ARM, which are common in mobile phones and tablet computers.

Fail? Go to the links. At MacRumors (the first link above), be sure to read the comments.

Oh, by the way, that linked article comparing the Surface RT with Surface Pro fails to mention that the battery life of the Surface Pro is about four, maybe five hours. Compare that with ten hours for the Surface RT and at least ten hours for the Apple iPad.