Re:Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hid...
by rschmitty on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @09:54PM
(#6131401)
How exactly did they have time to let brute force work? You say that as if PlayStation/Nintendo were nobodies that MS could just casually let time sink in to turn a profit
Re:Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hid...
by JunkDNA on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @10:45PM
(#6131609)
Microsoft could sit behind their Office/Windows/Exchange moat and lob millions of dollars of cruise missiles at them for a decade until they could get it figured out. A competitor who has nothing to lose and a huge source of profit is exceptionally dangerous. They could afford to lose money on Xbox until it worked because unlike the others, this was a hobby for them.
Re:Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hid...
by MBCook on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @10:35PM
(#6131563)
The XBox was subsidized by the profits from Windows & Office.
Surface is an attempt to stop the losses to other tablets and smartphones. If they don't fix the problem, they won't have years of extra profits to wait for the Surface to gain a footing and shore things up.
Re:Microsoft's Surface sales figures are in, and they're hid...
by culturestate on Tuesday July 30, 2013 @10:41PM
(#6131587)
Think about the difficulty of switching from a PS2 to an Xbox in 2001 versus switching from an iPad to a Surface in 2013. The garden walls are much higher today.
1. they actually had the time to let brute force work
2. it was well isolated from their main business - no matter how badly they failed each year, it did not, for example, take away office or windows sales.
But the tablet space is different. There are already enough iPads in workplaces now that people are re-thinking their dependence on MS office since they can't get anything with full compatibility. Android tablets are only just starting to impinge there but they will eventually as well. People are already talking about Android PCs too. The OEM partners are all shipping Win8 tablets but they are also shipping Android tablets and they have very little allegiance or dependence on MS in the tablet space. So MS has to anticipate they will not be able to charge high prices for Windows on cheap consumer laptops and tablets forever. Those days are over. The only way MS can be sure to maintain their margins is if they get a high margin hardware business going like Apple has.
So I would argue that Surface is a very key part of Microsoft's bid to stay relevant and it directly ties to their core business rather than being a parallel venture like Xbox was.