| Apple Fanboy and MS basher here. Seriously, the Surface is a great move. Aside from the whole Pro / RT naming thing, of course (confusing customers is not good). The Surface is, AFAIK, the only good tablet PC out there - it's a real flagship product for Wintel tablets. The OEMs will eventually beat MS on value, but I suspect Microsoft will be OK with that. Microsoft can afford to take a loss creating the market for Windows 8 tablets, and won't be upset if other OEMs start competing in the space - they'll then make money on software sales. MS needs tablet PCs to be a thing. Tablets are a thing - people love tablets. People will either choose between a laptop and a tablet, or just a tablet that can also run Office. If there's good Windows tablets, people will tend to go with that. As Intel improves mobile x86 chips, the choice will be even easier. Microsoft does not want everyone using Android / iOS tablet, because then the software ecosystem will move to iOS / Android apps (as it is already doing). Whether Microsoft should have made the hardware itself, or let OEMs do it is a good question, but I think they were right to do it themselves. Just look at what the competition has been like - every other Windows tablet I've seen (not a huge sample) has been pitiful - ugly and either not portable enough, or grossly underpowered. Also, making Surface probably gives them the institutional knowledge to make Windows better for tablets. |
MS accept (now) that its going to be a niche product but are OK with that because it leaves space for the OEMs