Microsoft Surface sales figures are a reflection of what the market thinks about their products.

It doesn’t surprise me that Microsoft have had a terrible sales results with their Surface tablet line.

Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're ABSOLUTELY HIDEOUS... Read More

When Apple introduced their iPad I recall that I was very pleasantly surprised. Apple introduced their tablet at a much lower price than I expected. Lower than their Macs and Mac Airs. For me that generated interest. Microsoft on the other hand introduced the Surface RT range which wasn’t compatible with Windows and their Surface Pro range was priced on the high end, where we are used to Windows notebook PCs which can be purchased for a much lower price.

The Surface RT just didn’t make sense. The entire market advantage Microsoft had with their existing client base was largely ignored. Why get an incompatible product when you can get similar incompatibility from the market leaders Apple and Android. A crippled version of Office that wasn’t even licensed for business use and at what I’d consider a high price for the device compared to Apple’s iPad.

The Surface Pro whilst interesting had a high price tag and a limited battery life. I even read it had a fan inside to keep things cool and to me that’s a concern. I’d consider myself gadget lover and I make most of my living supporting Microsoft products, but in this case their products simply didn’t make sense. Even if people wanted to buy the Surface Pro it wasn’t available for months after the expected launch time of January 2013. Pretty hard to keep interested in a product when there was no stock. By the time there was stock the Haswell processor was just around the corner so who wants to buy a Surface Pro when the new lower powered tablet could be right around the corner. After the initial interest in the Surface Pro I couldn’t help thinking it doesn’t have GPS which also put me off the device. Give people enough time to think about something and they’ll find reasons not to get it.

Overall not one of Microsoft’s finest hours. I think Microsoft luckily still have time to get it right because Apple and Android devices simply aren’t compatible with the applications most people use on a day-to-day basis. It will be interesting to see what comes to market later this year, but I have a feeling Microsoft thinks their products are worth more than the market thinks they’re worth, so I’m not really holding out much hope for them. Hopefully they can surprise me.

- Kelvin Eldridge
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