“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,” Monica Chen and Joseph Tsai report for DigiTimes.
“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,” Chen and Tsai report. “Although Asustek Computer, Samsung Electronics and Dell have all launched Windows RT-based tablets, consumer demand for those devices is also weak.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Garbage with kickstand. Like RIM’s PlayBook – amateur hour is over, don’t cha know – look for Microsoft’s ill-conceived mess to be liquidated via in Groupon soon.
Related articles:
Catastrophe Theory: Microsoft on the verge of a sudden collapse? – November 26, 2012
Beleaguered Microsoft has failed – November 14, 2012
Slate reviews Microsoft’s Surface tablet: Too slow, mercilessly buggy; why is it so bad? – November 6, 2012
Microsoft’s bloated Windows RT eats 16GB of Surface tablet – November 5, 2012
InfoWorld reviews Microsoft Surface RT: A disappointment; you’re better off with Apple’s iPad – October 31, 2012
Acer delays Windows RT tablets; adopts ‘wait and see’ approach after poor Surface RT reviews – October 30, 2012
Gizmodo reviews Microsoft Surface RT: Do not buy; inferior to Apple’s iPad; the worst of both worlds – October 25, 2012
The Verge reviews Microsoft Surface RT tablet: ‘The whole thing is honestly perplexing; who is this for?’ – October 24, 2012
Analyst: Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet priced too high, could be the next Zune – October 18, 2012
Dvorak: ‘Microsoft’s Surface tablet isn’t the Apple iPad, so it shouldn’t be priced like one’ – October 18, 2012
Microsoft inexplicably claims Surface RT tablet lower resolution screen beats iPad with Retina display – October 17, 2012
Microsoft Surface RT tablet Wi-Fi-only; 32GB for $599 with, $499 without keyboard, $699 for 64GB – October 16, 2012
Microsoft airs first TV ad for Surface tablet (with video) – October 15, 2012
Apple’s ‘iPad mini’ to obliterate Microsoft’s Windows 8, Surface RT tablet launches – October 13, 2012
Acer CEO to Microsoft: ‘Think twice’ about Surface tablets – August 7, 2012
Microsoft Surface tablet pricing leaked; US$1,000 for ‘cheapest’ Windows RT model – July 26, 2012
Ballmer: Uh, yeah, ‘Surface is just a design point,’ you know – July 10, 2012
Microsoft’s Buffoon, er… Ballmer throws down gauntlet against Apple – July 10, 2012
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Microsoft’s downfall: Inside the executive e-mails and cannibalistic culture that fueled Microsoft’s lost decade – July 7, 2012
HP said to dump Microsoft over Surface; to cozy up to Google Android for tablet efforts – July 2, 2012
Bad news for Microsoft’s iPad killer? – July 2, 2012
Dear Microsoft, Steve Balmer and Bill Gates: What is up with your obsession with keyboards? – June 28, 2012
Jason Schwarz: Top 10 reasons why Microsoft’s Surface is DOA – June 22, 2012
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The cost of Microsoft’s Surface tablets – June 20, 2012
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ZDNet’s Kingsley-Hughes: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is an awful, horrible, painful design disaster – June 8, 2012
Analyst meets with big computer maker, finds ‘general lack of enthusiasm’ for Windows 8 – June 8, 2012
Dvorak: Windows 8 an unmitigated disaster; unusable and annoying; it makes your teeth itch – June 3, 2012
The Guardian: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is confusing as hell; an appalling user experience – March 5, 2012
More good news for Apple: Microsoft previews Windows 8 (with video) – June 1, 2011
Microsoft is getting what it so richly deserves as tech moves away from their previous purview. They were never the sort of company capable with Bomberman in charge who could see any further ahead then the next Windows upgrade nor anticipate that mobile might do them in. Nor to excel in anything mobile, thinking beyond their usual boxed-in mentality. They are every bit as much as a DCW as RIM, it’ll just take a little longer.
Oh, come on, Microsoft invented The Tablet 11 years ago. /S
I thought Moses did!
Al Gore!
But, but, but…we like our strategy a lot! We really do.
We like our strategy. We like it a lot.
Shoulda just concentrated on what they do well …..which is…
…well heck, I’m struggling to remember…
MS should have released the Pro Tablet first, the stripped down RT sb about 300 dollars or less.
But, but … it’s snappy.
Or at least, clicky.
Whatever it is, it’s got to be better than that stepstool cum laplet, XPS 12, that Dull just began shipping. Hold it up in a windstorm and the screen part starts rotating, harnessing the wind. Tested in front of Mikey himself.
Clacky?
Maybe they should spend another billion in advertising.
Rounding error. They were using a Surface tablet to calculate the totals but it kept rebooting and then the cover split off.
Since Ballmer only expected to sell a quarter, sales were twice as good as expected.
Ballmer’s typical schedule:
11:00 am – Roll out of bed
11:15 am – pick self off ground after rolling off the bed
11:30 am – check out Minka Kelly pictures on iPad
12:00 am – shit, shower and shave
1:00 pm – power lunch
1:30 pm – power snack
2: 00 pm – arrive at office
2:30 pm – chair throwing workout
3:00 pm – rearrange deck chairs
4:00 pm – 8:00 pm – power dinner
Ballmer’s Surface wallpaper is a nekkid picture of Minka Kelly.
Where, exactly on the net, do you find nekkid pics of Minka Kelly?
“Minka Kelly – AskMen
http://www.askmen.com/…/89_minka_kelly.html
Minka Kelly made a sex tape and there’s a lot of controversy around it. Here’s why.”
You neglected to mention “jerking himself” in the schedule.
He’d rather eat than jerk himself.
You left out:
11:05am – Flatulate loudly & uncontrollably for about a minute, family members switch on emergency fans and attach drop-down airline style oxygen masks
…trouble was the BMS system was controlled from a Windows server…and it crashed. Had to evacuate the whole damn building…
You forgot 2:15 pm – Check copiers.
But but but…..it makes a clicking sound when the keyboard magnetically attaches itself using our ripped off Apple cover idea.
OR
But but but ….I thought people only bought iPads because the iPad cover makes a clicking sound when it attaches to the iPad….so we made that click even louder on the surface.
Yeah and you can dance to the sound of Surface cover clicking, a real innovation.
Next on “Dancing with the Stars” Ballmer and his click pad.
And judges deduct points every time his tongue comes out.
KIN I and KIN II rolled into one hot mess. Same result.
Don’t worry they will launch Surface 2 next year with even more kick stands and keys to play with and say this was merely a prototype to test the market.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am really enjoying this slow motion train wreck unfolding before my eyes.
Full steam ahead Captain Ballmer!
Definitely an exciting time to be pro-Apple. 😀
Retailers scrambling to return the other 50% on shelves and in transit.
I sense an HP Touchpad sized $99 Surface RT tablet sale soon.
Me too, I bought the HP TouchPad for my daughter because she breaks electronic things very easily. I did not want her to beat the crud out of an iPad. The RT seems more durable than the TouchPad, so at $99 it would be a great childs toy. But she is also getting more responsible, so maybe time for a iPad Mini. Hmmmmmm
Such a thoughtful dad you are.
They make a case you can get at wal mart that is for the iPad just for kids. It’s really heavy duty.
Then put a screen protector on it and youd be good
BizarroWorld.
“…sources from the upstream supply chain believe the new operating system may not perform as well as expected in the market.”
Gee, d’ya think?
=:~)
Remember, this is our old whipping boy DigiTimes reporting here. Take their news with a grain of salt.
2 million by the end of the year eh? How many microsoft employees are there?
You have to figure in their beleaguered children and spouses as well.
This idea is a little kookie, but Microsoft could try to capture the hipster market with a new series of commercials that plays on the finger-snapping “77 Sunset Strip” theme song, synchronized to rows of young adults sitting at their outdoor tables, snapping the Surface covers on and off in unison.
That could also capture the part of the geezer market that still remembers “77 Sunset Strip”. I wonder if Edd Byrnes is still alive to do a voiceover.
Kookie, Kookie lend me your comb.
Nice idea, but I can’t see it making any difference. No advert has ever made me go and buy an Apple product, I buy them because I worked with Apple products as part of my job, and have respect and appreciation for their products.
Using 77 Sunset Strip might be fun, and fit into the current zeitgeist for period drama, like Mad Men, but few people would likely remember it. I do, but I’d rather chew my own fingers off than buy one of Microsoft’s crappy products.
The covers would keep splitting though with that kind of punishment – they’d get to take #1,500 and run clean out of stock! Ad would never get made….
Heck – I just realised that I was about 5 when Sunset Strip was screened – starting to feel really old now.
Besides Windows 8 being such a SNAFU, if I was to buy a windows 8 device I ask the question why the Surface RT? I could get the full windows on a laptop that runs Office for less. What is the advantage here?
The same will be true with Surface on Intel. Why spend $1000 on the Surface when I can buy a laptop (which will weight about the same) for $600?
So let me see, they expected to sell 4 millions, but so far they have sold 0 or may be a couple of hundreds to some friends and they expected to sell 2 millons?
They are using the same android strategy, build as many as you can, ship them and then tell the world that there are so many devices out there even if no body is using them.
I think when Mr. Steve Ballmer die, all he want to bury with him is one thing only –> keyboard.
+1
I saw one of those covers on here the other day. Really, 5 exposed magnet balls, really, that’s the best they could do. This really is a train wreck, we might be witnessing history watching them crash – I just hope the governement does feel they have to bail them out when they really start circling that drain. Not even the Tidy Bowl man will be able to help them!
Just to play devil’s advocate here…
Microsoft is a software company. I don’t think the goal of the Surface tablet was to put their hardware partners out of business by making a more successful product. It was to create template hardware, demonstrating their vision of hardware that works with Windows 8, as a starting point for their hardware partners to emulate and innovate from. A side goal was to improve Microsoft’s software & hardware integration know how.
So just because Surface tablet flopped doesn’t mean MS failed. Windows 8 is what has to flop for MS to fail (which might be happening).
Nice try.
Thank you.
Good to know that even dull-witted Windows-centric consumers aren’t dumb enough to buy Microsoft’s latest “me too” garbage. Maybe there’s hope for America yet.
Everyone knows that the Surface RT is bound for failure. It’s an underpowered, app-free dog.
However, I recommend that the Apple faithful take the Surface Pro threat seriously.
Microsoft may be fat, inefficient, and slow — but it does have the resources and the enterprise presence to knock iPads out of corporate offices. Watch as Microsoft reveals a full Office suite for the Surface and a crippled iOS version.
After all, CIOs are typically pimps for whatever MS sends their way. Managers can’t live without Powerpoint and Outlook crapware, and productive employees have nothing even close to compete against Excel or Word or Project. Apple’s pathetically slow iWork suite development certainly doesn’t help the situation.
750,000 applications in the Apple store — over half of which are complete rubbish time wasters — is nothing compared to the legacy library of Windows applications, many of which are indispensible for business and compatible with the Surface Pro. Whether businesses ditch their laptops for Surfaces remains to be seen, but Apple needs to get serious about Mac and iOS penetration into enterprise markets. If it doesn’t, Microsoft could very well claw back a lot of market share.
Superior hardware only overcomes so much — at some point, Apple needs productivity and creativity apps to penetrate new computing markets.
No one here is underestimating Microsoft, not really, just throwing pine cones at the slow, lumbering giant sloth that thinks it can dance.
I think a compelling story line is that Microsoft underestimated Apple all along, and even today is loath to admit it.
Cum singulis annus gloria, when Microsoft perceived a competitive threat from company X, they slammed the door on X’s fingers by pre-announcing their version of the app or service and waited for X’s sales to dry up; if that didn’t happen, they bought out X and let them die in a parched vacant lot.
But Microsoft never saw Apple as a serious competitive threat in any way. If they had, they’d have slammed the door on them. No, Apple was useful as a kind of idiot savant little brother with occasionally clever ideas that Microsoft could cherry pick at their leisure.
But now Apple is eating Microsoft’s lunch, and they climbed to that position without even trying to penetrate the CIO/CFO and board room strongholds. As corporate adoption of iPads and iPhones begins to accelerate, and as the PC industry slides toward the La Brea tar pits, only now does the giant sloth stir, blinking into a hot, strangely different sun.
You may be correct, but a vast majority of the comments here smell strangely like the MS hubris of the late 1990’s. … and we all know what overconfidence does to any company.
Point taken, absolutely. Still, that smell you detected is emanating from unwashed fanboys. That’s not to say Apple brass themselves aren’t overconfident because the evidence is that some of them are. Which could easily explain Apple’s famous missteps.
Anyone care to place a bet on when Mr. Steve Ballmer will Zune /KIN the Surface RT ?
Question is, will Microsloth’s board ever Zune/Kin Mr. Ballmer.
But let’s hope not, it’s too fun to watch this tragedy unfold.
” the new operating system may not perform as well as expected in the market”
Um. Yes it does. But I guess it depends on whose expectations we are taking about here.