“Microsoft is expected to announce second-generation Surface tablets at the company’s Build Developer Conference, which will be hosted from June 26-28, according to sources from the upstream supply chain,” Aaron Lee and Joseph Tsai report for DigiTimes.
“Since Microsoft only achieved sales of 1.5 million units for its first-generation Surface tablets (one million Surface RT and 500,000 Surface Pro), only half of its original expectations of 3-4 million units, the company is taking a cautious attitude over promotions for its second-generation models,” Lee and Tsai report. “Microsoft retained most of its component suppliers from the first-generation models for the second-generation ones with Pegatron Technology staying as the devices’ manufacturer.”
Lee and Tsai report, “The sources also noted that the second-generation Surface devices reportedly will only feature a 7- to 9-inch displays to meet the rising demand for smaller tablet devices.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We keep looking for a Surface tablet out in the wild, but, alas, no luck yet in spotting one. In order to better entice their target market, perhaps Microsoft should bundle each Surface tablet with a cool helmet and handy drool cup?
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You know MDN, that’s a good point. I travel almost continuously and what new tablet do I keep seeing everywhere?
The iPad mini.
I have yet to see a Surface in the wild. Perhaps that because you either need a “table” to comfortably type on the “tablet” (Microsoft clearly confused those words) or for the W8ight version, one must be a bodybuilder to lift and hold the thing for more than a few seconds. Oh, and also, it sucks. I used one. It really really sucks. No apps. Counterintuitive. Heavy. Slow. And the OS is really unpleasant.
MDN you do make a good point. I think the whole cool helmet and drool bucket could be molded into the polycarbonate case, with a retractable chain.
Click!!
That’s an entire new tablet accessories market spawned from the Surface! What a successful product!
MDN – hilarious.
Cautious Microsoft…
“taking a cautious attitude over promotions for its second-generation models”
Perhaps they are listening to BlackBerry… in five years no need for tablets.
I for one have played with the Surface in the stores.
Personally its a sold device, seems well built. Even the silly kickstand – at least its metal. Price is reasonable – but then HELP its Windows plagued with viruses and advertisements. Why the hell anyone would wish this?
The interface, on the other hand, is truly a pain to use.
One ends up swiping left right up down… in fact the z10 BlackBerry makes more sense. Microsofts familiar softwares are well, the same old thing – no innovations there.
Only one thing interested me though, the three input methods. I rather liked the hand recognition…
Newton had it – OSX had it – why not iOS?
Break dance lessons will be included with the 2nd generation devices
lol, Boomer Sooner.
You mean they are putting boom-box speakers on the 2nd gen device.
Whoa! That means they’ll actually get some sales in the ghetto.
The 1st generation was stillborn.
Eventually something will penetrate that thick skull surrounding Ballmer’s cranium. Microsoft takes at least 3-4 iterations before they get it approximately right. And then when they do, there will be wholesale changes again because they realise unless they change something, anything, in the UI, in a desperate search for sales, people won’t upgrade their Windows OS which will lead to declining sales. That’s the Microsoft rationalisation anyway.
But what Ballmer doesn’t understand is that people hate change and prefer a gradual progression over violent, wrenching change which is what Windows 8 is about. It’ll require a bunker buster bomb to penetrate through 15 feet of Ballmer’s thick skull, before he sees the error of his ways and brings back the Start button to Windows 8.
Until then for the average consumer it’s “Hasta la Vista, baby.”
I partly disagree.
People hate change…..unless its super-intuitive, and obviously better.
If people simply hated change, the iPhone wouldn’t have taken off as it did, since it was extremely different from every smart phone (or any other device) before it.
Obviously, that was a GOOD change.
The Windows 8 mess can’t really be put on Ballmer’s shoulders… I doubt he made a single design decision regarding Windows 8 functionality. He just doesn’t get product.
They screwed up because Microsoft’s principal concern is ubiquity, not functionality. And Windows 8 is the outcome of all their fiefdoms protecting their turfs rather than building a better product. I still can’t believe how they decided to remove the start button. It boggles the mind that no-one stood up loud enough to say what a terrible idea that was.
Two points:
A) Ballmer is a marketing geek. Typical (not all!) marketing geeks have no comprehension of how stuff works, inventing, innovating or producing anything. They just want to schmooze, influence and sell. They (typically) make the worst possible managers and (typically) tank their companies. Witness Kodak. Witness Sony. Witness Microsoft! It’s called ‘Marketing-As-Management‘. Run like hell away.
B) PLENTY of people ranted vehemently at Microsoft about removing the ‘Start’ button and burying the file system behind the ‘Metro’ GUI in Windows 8. Microsoft paid ZERO attention. That’s what Microsoft beta testing is all about! Ignoring the beta testers. 😯
And now there’s the threat of ‘Windows Blue’ which kills the ability to use 3rd party tools for accessing the ‘Start’ button and its accoutrements. Pray that ‘Blue’ gets tossed into the code chipper to be used as fertilizer.
Oh I agree. Ballmer’s only thought to any problem is “windows, windows, windows”. Which is why he was probably sold on the concept of windows 8 (same for phone, tablet or computer). He wouldn’t know that they’re not compatible.
But you would think that Sinofsky would have been able to tell that the revision was a usability nightmare. I can only think that it was removed to force people to “give metro a try”. It might have been embarrassing to watch everybody switch to Windows 8 but just run everything in classic mode.
“that thick skull surrounding Ballmer’s cranium”
NB: The cranium is the skull.
(Your location is quite remote from that area.)
I disagree with this:
“Until then for the average consumer it’s “Hasta la Vista, baby.”
It should be:
“Until then for the average consumer its’s “Hasta la XP, baby”.
Just for accuracy and all.
You’re on a roll lately, BLN! You usually bug me but you’ve been spot on as well as funny these last few days. Keep it up!
Just as crappy as the original, only smaller, so you can hide it more easily to avoid embarrassment.
“Our 7″ flop is loads better than our 10.6″ flop!”
“Click in two sizes!”
Forgot to add:
” Floppy seconds!”
So MS are planning to build a mini flop, but will it out-flop it’s big brother the pro flop. iFlop mini anyone?
But will it have a kick stand and a keyboard that clicks? Balmer ‘knows’ that you need a keyboard for business and if Apple does it then Microsoft surely must do it too.
MDN – not a cool helmet but an old style Beanie cap with propeller on top AND that drool cup. Ballmer’s 2nd gen failed tablet update reminds me of an ANIMAL HOUSE hazing shellacking again – “Thank you sir may I have another!” – And the market goes THWACK!!, again!
I saw one in the wild while I was in DC. One.
I know the owner, he’s quite proud of it.
He showed a great amount of sympathy for the MacBook Pro owners he works with.
My suggestions is that Ballmer barks out the command to his minions to build 100 million units! Bundle it with every Windows License sold!
“MacDailyNews Take: We keep looking for a Surface tablet out in the wild, but, alas, no luck yet in spotting one. In order to better entice their target market, perhaps Microsoft should bundle each Surface tablet with a cool helmet and handy drool cup?”
Don’t forget the boom-box and the metronome.
Microsoft was relevant in 1980…
Two Points!
1) Check this out: Surface Windows RT sales have plummeted:
Tablets with Windows RT see slow sales, IDC says
Researchers at IDC said manufacturers shipped 200,000 tablets running Windows RT, the special version of Windows for iPad-style tablets, in the January to March period. That’s down from about 900,000 shipped in the fourth quarter. – – Oops.
2) Seeing as Windows RT is a FAIL, why is Microsoft even considering pushing it forward into further devices?
Because Microsoft is an expert at wasting money on lame, wannabe copycat products. All I can say about that is:
Spend Microsoft! Spend SPEND SPEND!
Wow. The short bus brigade is certainly taking it where the sun don’t shine today.
I have only seen two Microsoft Surface devices in real life. And unfortunately, both were at my desk – dev eval units. The Surface RT was ridiculous – I can’t believe they let that thing out of the lab.
The Surface Pro wasn’t much better, but that was more because Windows 8 is just horrible. Otherwise, it was pretty much on par with all the other Windows 8 Pro tablets I have had the displeasure of touching (the Lenovo & Dell offerings). All of these Windows 8 Pro tablets have the same problems. The terrible Windows 8 tablet user experience and the trade offs of the Pro tablet model choices (horrible battery life and somewhat decent processing power or slightly less crappy battery life and anemic processing power) means that anyone with a brain would be better off with a Windows laptop and an iPad (or obviously even better, a MacBook Air or Pro and an iPad). The use case for these things just isn’t there.
MS would be wise to just kill the Surface line completely. Give it the Kin treatment. It looks like they will use their Zune product life cycle on this one though.
Just to put MDN’s snark in perspective, there are now more Windows 8 users on the net than Mac OS 10.8 by the latest reports.
Darwin, spot on! exactly the point i’ve been making here for months!
While Cook fails to defend iOS market share (we will never know if the iPad mini is merely undercutting iPad sales, but we all know that Samsung’s surge in phone market share has caught Apple flat-footed with only one model to offer a very diverse global mobile phone market), Cook also took his eyes completely off the ball on Mac OS.
Microsoft’s OS may be complete crap, but isn’t it interesting that now MS is the company rolling out frequent hardware and software releases? Hence, MSFT stock price is stable, its institutional customers still firmly contracted into the Wintel platform for the foreseeable future — and Cook watches AAPL slide. He plays stock buyback games and the most timid, slow, underwhelming Mac hardware & software updates possible instead of aggressively taking back the PC market from MS.
Apple’s profitability today is fantastic — thank you Jobs! I fear that Apple’s profitability will wane under Cook’s slow, plodding leadership. All the anti-Microsoft arrogant condescending snark in the world isn’t going to help Apple if iOS market share continues to slide.
Bundle it with an iPad Mini and they’d quintuple their sales!
Let’s see 5 x 0 is… oh, never mind.
Should they not go all in if they only managed 50% of their goals? If they are unsure they should probably terminate the project and start over.