“There have been about two million Windows RT tablets shipped globally, fewer than the 4-4.5 million units originally expected to be shipped as of the end of 2012, and actual sales so far are likely to be less than one million units, according to Taiwan-based supply chain makers,” Monica Chen and Adam Hwang report for DigiTimes.
“Since Microsoft announced Surface in mid-2012, some partners gave up plans to develop Windows RT tablets, resulting in the launch of Surface RT and only [a few] other Windows RT tablets,” Chen and Hwang report. “Sales of all other Windows RT tablets are estimated at about 4000,000 units, short of original expectations, the sources indicated.”
Chen and Hwang report, “Prices for Surface RT are likely to be lowered to clear inventories, the sources noted. Microsoft has offered incentives to invite vendors launching Windows RT tablets to participate in development of second-generation Windows RT models, but these vendors have so far been unwilling to do so, the sources said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Garbage with a Kickstand. If this debacle doesn’t kill Ballmer, nothing will. Long live Ballmer T. Clown!
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“Click”
But… but… but… we can dance to our clicking tablets…. DANG THE KEYBOARD JUST CRACKED AGAIN!!! FSCK!!!!
+1
And half the sales have been to ad agencies to outfit all the actors in those commercials!
LOL – didn’t CNET or some other faux tch site publish an article a couple weeks back on how iOS devices are “not cool” and all the “cool kids” are buying MS Surface? Of course we knew exactly what it was – FUD pointed in AAPL’s direction. Those commercials spelled the last nail (or lightbulb) in Festers coffin. CLICK!
Ouch!
All hail Sweaty Ballmer T. Clown.
Sporting a shiny shaved chome dome.
That much?
All hail Baldmer.
Crappy MS products do not make Apple products any better.
… yes they DO!
There was a sucker born every minute for a million minutes in the lifetime of this planet we call Earth. And then there was Ballmer, not born, but pushed out of an alien’s birth canal.
And you and your twin have been attached to him ever since.
Are you sure it was the alien birth canal and not some other orifice?
Are you sure it was the alien birth canal and not some other rear orifice?
He looks of the Conehead species, but yet his intelligence level is below Conehead standards.
Didn’t Tim Cook say at the Apple Town Meeting that they sold 11 million iPad minis?
The real fun will begin if and when the pro version is released. The MS fanboys have been touting this as the iPad killer. Why? Because it has a full fledge OS that they can use to do “real work.”
I really wonder how many MS tablet (transformable to a laptop) lovers there are left? I have to believe most already have jumped to Android in order to maintain their anti-Apple status.
While they will sell more than they did with the RT, the real test will be how many are seen in the wild…and still in use a year later.
Except that 99-99.9% of all iPad and tablet users aren’t looking to do “real work” especially on a klunktastic OS $$$$ tablet with cracking keyboard 2X the price of a better PC laptop (if anything in the way of a PC can be construed as “better”).
Those needing to do “real work” will simply retreat to their dismal post-it-plastered cubicle with the sagging shelf of dog-eared manuals and SOP binders, the Dell box doubling as a space heater, the grimy keyboard, the gummy mouse and the worn-out stress ball.
Uncannily accurate description!
You can actually hear a click? OMG, I’m dumping my iPad for Windows RT that makes a click sound. Sooo coooool!
There’s an app for that!
No need to dump your iPad, folks! Just download the free iPad/iPhone app “Beeps and Clicks Sounds” from Smart Wire LLC. Now we’re way cool!
Ballmer, like a twelve year hangover. God bless him!.
Right! to there retailers maybe, but it’s probably a rounding error!
Stay Balmer, Stay!
They sold that many? Incredible!
4000,000 is an interesting number. It could be interpreted in a number of ways.
In 2030 when Steve Ballmer bumps into Steven Sinofsky in a Florida nursing home the conversation MAY go like this:
Oh Hi Steve!
-Hi Steve. (Oh Christ he’s STILL sweating, better get downwind)
– Remember that presentation for the Surface? Oh you DO remember surely?? – you made it crash and had to sprint away to get another one?
Completely crystal, thanks. For your information, I didn’t MAKE it crash, it sort of had a mind of its own and just kinda went to sleep. Which was what all our stuff ever did, as I recall.
– They never understood what a great lil’ product the Surface really was did they?
Nah, they just didn’t get it. I mean – apps running FULL SCREEN all the time with just a few lines of text and the odd graphic – no clutter, no content, nothing, I mean really NOTHING to get in the way at all. Just white everywhere.
– And those ads and BSOD’s were so damn pretty – and that snappy keypad really CLICKED didn’t it?
Yeah, but that was ALL it did. Click. Mine split and all the magnets fell out.
– Really? I remember you could actually TYPE on the damn things!
You could but if you went at more than 30 words a minute Win8 started looping the CPU. I have a Surface in my treatment room that’s still trying to show me what I typed out last year. Dying to know what I wrote.
– But who can forget the App Store? We got all the way up to 5,000,000 apps in the end.
Yeah but 4,500,000 of them were repeated attempts to get Word working right for fscks sake! Mind you, I thought it was a smart move dropping the sequential numbering for new OS releases, Win8.100564.500.3. looked really good on the box. Sorta kept the focus on 8 didn’t it?
– yeah, we were really cool back in the day. It let ’em know we really cared and were prepared to stick at it until we got it RIGHT!
Did we?
Steve?
-What?
Why’d you prance about like a freaking clown?
– Dunno. Damned if I can remember.
Outstanding! 😀
=:~)
A tip of the Hatlo hat!
Ah, hannahjs, thanks for the memories of “They’ll Do It Every Time” and “Little Iodine.” 🙂
#MicrosoftSuicide
Microcide?
Microcide would suggest anyone killing Microsoft. #MicrosoftSuicide is specific to Microsoft killing themselves.
IBM’S motto, 1915: Think.
Microsoft’s motto, 2013: Stink.
And what they don’t tell us is that 390,000 of those were returned to once the victims got them home and actually tried to use them. The other 10,000 are thought to be sitting in the desk drawers of Microsoft employees.
Let’s not forget the few owned by Bill Gates’ children.
How many employees does MS have in Redmond WA?
It looked like they gave one to every employee who worked there. All three of my MS employed friends brought one home.
I hope they sold them on eBay fast before people stopped buying. Kind of a fringe benefit/bonus. More money in their pockets couldn’t be a bad thing.
… the stock will shoot up the roof: like 25% or something.
(see: Amazon).
Correctamundo!
Here here! Long live the Monkey One!
I would be surprised if any Surface RTs were sold outside of MS employees and developers.
… that being said, the Surface Pro may very well gain traction, most likely as the “business iPad” trotted out by dumbass CIOs who have been beholden to Windows for 20 years or more. After all, the typical executive only needs two applications: punypoint and outhouse. meanwhile, the people who do actual productive work continue to be forced to use clunky PCs in most offices. it’s a tradition, you see.
Let me ask an honest question. Have any of you actually seen or used a Surface? Would you consider giving it a chance?
If not, why trash something you don’t know anything about?
Let’s ask an honest question. Have you actually seen or tried a Surface? Would you consider giving it a fair chance?
If not, why spend so much time bashing something you don’t know anything about?
I HAVE tried a Surface. I touched a few tiles and the OS hung up on the 3rd touch. The machine had to be rebooted. I tried again and found that some gestures didn’t always give me the expected result, I found it downright hard work to navigate (not at all intuitive) and thought that the whole look of the tiled interface seemed garish and childish, the constantly updating tiles to be a distraction.
Having to run everything in full screen, without the option of resizable windows is a distinct disadvantage, the option of having a 1/3 – 2/3 display of only 2 apps at a time is downright limiting and makes for a lot of unnecessary user interaction moving back and forth to locate other apps. This takes focus away from what you are doing and the whole OS just gets in the way. In tablet mode this is somewhat understandable but this is supposed to be a machine for desktop users too, don’t forget.
By accessing Win7 through a tile – i.e. treating normal desktop mode as a separate app in its own right is an admission by M$ that what would be considered a normal multi-tasking / multi windowed desktop experience was impossible within the constraints imposed by the Win8 OS so they basically just copped out and provided a tile for access.
The very fact that they had to provide a back door to a normal desktop mode should have screamed at them that something was very wrong with their thinking here.
The fact that there are a ton of damning reviews available on the web, that sales are basically dismal, that users of W8 straight away sought the means of bypassing the Win8 OS start screen speaks volumes.
A tablet device is, and always will be, a different experience to a desktop situation and a single, all encompassing OS is bound to become a series of compromises. M$ basically do not understand what they are competing with or how to go about it.
M$ had a chance here to start afresh, cut out the bloat, streamline everything and offer something different but they have patently failed to achieve these goals and have left the public in a state of sheer indifference to the Surface or Win8, as poor sales results can readily testify to. Had they come up with something that was amazing and a must-have then high sales volumes would have spoke for itself but this has simply not happened.
After a taste of the Surface and Win8, going back to OSX / iOS is a real pleasure. If the Surface & Win8 is the best that M$ can come up with, after many years of experience in software design and with huge resources to call on, then they are in a very sorry position and deserve to fail.
When I see comments like yours, I see people who are trying to cling on to M$, desperate to want to believe in M$, but secretly wondering what on earth happened with M$ and feeling betrayed by an organisation that should know better.
Apple left me feeling a (very) tiny bit like this with some recent faux-pas of their own but Apple and OSX / iOS are so very far ahead of M$ / Win8 that there really is no comparison worth talking about anymore.
No offence, just my opinion. Personally, you couldn’t GIVE me a Surface, it would end up in the bin (trash).