“Analytics firm Chitika looked at tens of millions of (North American) tablet ad impressions from November 12-18,” Will Shanklin reports for Gizmag. “The Windows RT Surface barely registered, making up 0.13% of tablet web traffic. That means that out of every 10,000 tablet ad impressions, an average of 13 came from Surface.”
“This is hardly the start Microsoft wanted. It spent months hyping the tablet, marketing it as a new productivity-focused device,” Shanklin reports. “Steve Ballmer and company held two Surface keynotes, and spent millions in advertising. What happened?”
Shanklin reports, “Pricing didn’t help. Surface starts at US$500, the same as the iPad… It’s as if Microsoft didn’t notice the Xooms, Playbooks, and Galaxy Tabs that had already failed with that strategy… There’s also the tablet itself. Its operating system is complicated, split into two desktop environments. It has a sparse app library. The device’s display, battery life, and cameras are inferior to the iPad’s. A kickstand and a keyboard clicking sound aren’t going to make up for that.”
“Chitikia’s statistics are bad for Microsoft, but they aren’t much better for Google,” Shanklin reports. “The Nexus 7 and 10 combined for over seven times the web traffic of Surface. That sounds good at first, but it still only makes up about 1% of tablet web traffic. The iPad continues to dominate, with 88% of all tablet web traffic.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Getting a T-shirt with “I’m an idiot” printed on it is 50 times cheaper, and only slightly less effective, than wasting your money on beleaguered Microsoft’s garbage with a kickstand.
Related articles:
MKM Partners cuts Microsoft price target, estimates on lower than expected Surface, Windows 8 sales – December 5, 2012
Why Microsoft’s Surface tablet is doomed – December 5, 2012
App developers shun Microsoft’s Surface tablet – December 4, 2012
Microsoft Surface Pro to offer only half the battery life of Apple’s latest iPad with Retina display – November 30, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface Pro iPad killer to start at $899 – November 29, 2012
Microsoft’s Surface tablet flops, orders reportedly cut in half – November 29, 2012
TechCrunch’s Siegler reviews Microsoft Surface RT: ‘It’s time for a drop test – right into the garbage can’ – November 19, 2012
Slate reviews Microsoft’s Surface tablet: Too slow, mercilessly buggy; why is it so bad? – November 6, 2012
InfoWorld reviews Microsoft Surface RT: A disappointment; you’re better off with Apple’s iPad – October 31, 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
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
Ouch…
I would think that we should not be too quick to guess how many Surfaces have been sold. Remember that iOS users tend to hit the internet MUCH more than Android users by a large factor.
The Surface is pretty new and I think that most users will have a steep learning curve before getting on the internet.
Lets look again in 3 months. That lets everyone get one for christmas, and spend 2 months trying to learn how to surf with it. Then we can gloat with glee…
Just a thought,
en
The point of it is advertisers and people who sell stuff are gonna like Apple’s offerings a lot more where they get results. Not people who buy Internet devices and then barely use them for that purpose or buy software for it. Apple users are king in mobile consumption.
If you’re not going to use a Surface to get on the internet, what else are you going to use it for? Android is not a fair comparison because there are other uses for Android phones such as using it as a phone, texting device, horse suppository, etc.
Lol!
You can’t get that rather large phone in a horses ass….
…said the city boy.
wait, I mean….
Horse suppository? No, no, no. They’re being used as Minka Kelly’s bra filler.
Then I want to be reincarnated as her phone.
Hey – now don’t you go forgetting that the Surface doubles up as a skateboard – you can also multi-task by dancing with one while snapping a keyboard into place (just make sure you find one without the exposed wiring – you get tangled up while skating and smack! -straight into stationary objects).
I hear that the kickstand can act as a brake in skateboard mode but there’s absolutely NO control…its either fully off or fully on, thats it. The digital brake – invented by Microsoft. Too bad brakes are completely analogue devices but they never could understand this stuff.
Why doesn’t anyone get it? The Surface is clearly being positioned as a musical instrument. Just look at the percussion choruses accompanying the break dancing and Broadway choreography.
It should be a no-brainer to surf the internet on any tablet. Why should it be made difficult to do? Microsoft should have all the resources to make it easy to do, no excuses.
This forum is set up for Android and MSFT bashing so let the folks bash at will. 🙂 MDN takes are hilarious.
Good rational advice! You apparently haven’t been on the internet long! 😉
Having said that, I would wager that in 3 months, you’ll find the same result.
It won’t be the same result because in three months most of the Surfaces will have been returned.
Don’t forget the Surface doesn’t have 3G/4G, so it is also limited to WiFi connections. That really limits portability usefulness.
However, the stats don’t lie — there are very, very few Surface tablets surfing the internet. Which means there are very, very, very few Surface tablets in use.
aww, I just hate that for Ballmer T.
‘A kickstand and a keyboard clicking sound aren’t going to make up for that.”
Priceless and oh, so true!
Beleaguered Microsoft.
Let’s just say BM for short from now on. That’s already an acronym for something pretty much the same.
Just saw on local Cablevision news channel a blurb about Microsoft increasing production of Surface….. I don’t think so.
That report is not bogus, although it is, hmm, a bit ridiculous. It’s over on the left….
http://appleinsider.com/articles/12/12/12/microsoft-hopes-to-boost-surface-sales-by-expanding-retail-availability
“Your momma got a peg leg with a kickstand.” They are canes for the too old or the too young. Weakness needs to lean. Strength stands on its own. Apple innovates. The rest steal, knock off, by nature they are weak, and thus needing of the kickstand – literally and figuratively.
Has anyone noticed that every ad on TV for the Surface never shows anyone actually DOING anything with it?
Other than flipping it around and attaching the keyboard, that is…
….and when they are using it they are using it like a laptop – never using it as a tablet – which it is supposed to be…. They run around looking for a flat surface to put it down on to use it.
some damn fine dancing, though.
I thought that’s all it did. Sort of like a very expensive Metro-nome.
SirPrise, SirPrise, SirPrise…Gomer
The comments on the article site are, predictably, stupid:
“Erry one I know is waiting for Surface Pro” or “All my tech friends use Android tablets”. Yes, your personal observations trump actual real data. I guess living in an alternate, fact free universe is not limited to politics anymore.
The most powerful proof in the universe: anecdotes.
“I guess living in an alternate, fact free universe is not limited to politics anymore.”
lol.
Just chatted with a friend. Apparently Gates was at a rip-off MS store in NJ yesterday hawking the goods. The place was pretty much empty and Gates wasn’t having much luck. My friend said to his wife, “Look, it’s Bill Gates.” She just kept walking.
Hey BMWT — PRICELESS! Did your friend mention whether Bill was actually DOING anything with the Surface, or was he just waving it around and attaching the cover? 🙂
Y’know, the image of Gates getting jiggy with a Surface is hilarious. But AFAIK, he was just kinda being low-key and trying to get people in the store and schmoozing a bit. I guess it was an underwhelming event 8-(
“My friend said to his wife, “Look, it’s Bill Gates.” She just kept walking.”
Thank you.
I didn’t think I could laugh any louder today. Then you posted this.
Nothing to see here except a clueless geek. Move it along…
But it makes a clicking sound, how can it not be selling? And there are dancing people.
With this auspicious start MSFT will soon be hosting a funeral for the iPad cuz, “Herp Derp”.
Upvote!
I loved seeing the Surface and the iPad appearing on two shows last Thursday. Quite telling.
On Elementary, Sherlock wanted to do a search. Obviously MS paid for product placement because while he was sitting on a comfortable chair he had to: place a long, think folder on his lap to act as a desktop, click the keyboard on to the Surface, open the kickstand (both with a loud click) and finally, start typing his search query into bing using the loud, attached keyboard. He look silly but I bet MS pad bing for it.
On The Neighbors the iPad was mentioned. It was the main item. N the kids wish list. When the aliens opened it they though it was a bike and used it like a Frisbee. The human kid was horrified that his iPad was being tossed around. Then, when the Etch-A-Sketch was opened the aliens thought it was the iPad. He started talking into it asking Siri all kinds of complicated questions and to do things for him. The tweat he made on the EAS was priceless. At the end, still talking into the EAS and not getting any response he almost gave up and said he would get a Kindle. That lasted about two seconds until he realized that even an EAS was better than a kindle asking Siri – “does this suit make my butt look fat”
I was watching Star Trek Monday night and I saw Spock using his Newton.
Well of course it flopped.
What do you expect from something that’s about as useful as Pavlov’s cat….?
…or even Schrödinger’s dog.
Maybe this is the reason Microsoft leaked the Office for iPad. They can see their cash cow drying up. Then the matter of the percentage from the App Store of 30 perent that Microsoft would like to reduce or make null for Office subscriptions.
You know Ballmer and Microsoft, allow others to pay for their mistakes if any way possible.
Has anyone ever see one in the wild? I haven’t.
The idiot IT supervisor, a known Apple hater, has one. It’s hideous, and he got all the keyboard crap, too. Makes it basically a laptop with gangrene.
You’ll have to go in a Microsloth store to see one, but good luck trying to find one of those. Bonus is if you do find one, the lines are short.
getting a shirt with “I”m an idiot” is 50 times cheaper ” ? !!
and easier ! this is priceless.
lately, when I read an MDN article I go first to the MDN comments for my morning laugh.
seriously though, it’s been proven innumerable times that people are idiots. It shouldn’t be astounding how the big companies can get things so wrong, but it always is to me.
Well, big companies ARE people, my friend!
The funniest part of all is when it’s demonstrated that they’re wrong—they pretend it doesn’t matter, or they hide until it blows over, or they try to distract you, or they insist they were misquoted, or they blame the press/government/public, or they bristle at your impertinence and stalk off in a huff, or they hang their heads in mortification. Oh, wait, they don’t do that last one; the mea culpa is out of fashion—has been for centuries, I guess…what a lousy species…
The funniest most illogical thing about the whole Surface deal was selling it only in Microsloth stores and on line. Crickets are chirping all day in those stores. What marketing idiots. But we knew that. Poor marketing, poor performance, lousy design. All that was left to do was to paint it brown.
If they sold it in more retail outlets, then they’d have had tons of returns to process and dump into the landfill. Maybe it was smarter to only sell in Microsoft stores.
Today I read that they are now deciding that was a dumb move (ya think?) and they need to put it in stores other than their own.
Good ‘ol Microsloth—always late to the party or got the wrong address.
And arrives late to the party wearing a dress that’s a cheap imitation of the expensive designer dress someone else at the party is wearing.
Of 13 hits, 12 were from people checking it out in MS stores before running screaming into the night.
Not true, it was 11 out of 13 …… Balmer was the 12th and the 13th was some poor sucker ……
…or the Surface keep rebooting after the browser crashed.
Microsoft is in serious pain with tablets. Part of the problem is that they did tablets wrong for a decade, and then had Ballmer announce the year of the tablet when that year was only about the iPad (the only thing Ballmer has ever been right about).
Now with this generation of tablets, Microsoft is just too late to the party.
They’re marketing the Surface RT in a way that’s causing far too much confusion. Really, the RT shouldn’t exist, but if they feel they must, they should market the RT as being the consumption tablet. Bring the price down, even if that means removing features like the USB port and such. They also need to seriously invest in bribing developers, but not just paying developers for half-assed apps, reward developers for quality apps.
But instead they’re marketing the RT as being “more like a laptop” than other tablets. Or being “better suited for production”. Both of those positionings are false, and worse, conflict with the positioning of the Surface Pro.
People buying the Surface RT are going to be severely let down in the productiveness of it compared to the iPad because the iPad has far more apps and it’s all designed to be a tablet and optimized around that experience.
The Surface Pro is what Microsoft should’ve focused on. It may seem counter-intuitive that after a decade of PCs as tablet failure, this is the route to go, but at this point it’s the only market that’s available to Microsoft, especially since they put all their desktop/notebook eggs into the Windows 8 basket.
The first generation of Surface Pro will face obstacles in being too expensive, too short in battery life, and perhaps other issues (weight, bulkiness, speed, etc…), but the roadmap for Intel architecture will provide very efficient processors capable of running full Windows 8 very well.
It won’t be the hardware that’s holding Surface Pro back, at least not after this generation (or maybe the next). Instead it will be about optimization of the user experience. A tablet is just a poor platform to run a full desktop OS with all the full desktop applications. It’s not just about the speed and efficiency of the processor, it’s about how you interact with the device.
Still, there are use cases for a full OS in a tablet, and Microsoft is likely to fill this niche.
Their best option though is to seize the opportunity to go back to their roots…software. Microsoft could be far more successful in providing applications and services across all platforms.
At the point the processors get so efficient, and batteries get so good, there will be an iPad with almost invisible keyboard and running full OSX
Oh wait, we have the Air today, only the keyboard does not unattach, and then reattach with a “click”
So much for later, get an air now if you want an ultraportable with keyboard and full OS, especially if you want an OS that is not full of spaghetti leftovers….
The “at the point” mark isn’t that far away. I’m talking about 2 years or so…maybe less.
And don’t get me wrong, I want my MacBook Air to be a ultraportable, and I want my iPad to be a tablet, and I want my MacBook Pro to be a full portable workstation and no funky mix of interfaces not optimized to the devices. However there will still be a niche for people who want a tablet and need to run full Windows software. This is Microsoft’s only shot at this point.
Normally, I think MDN’s takes and responses are a tad ‘over the top’, but I can’t really quibble about this one.
What other 200 tablets makes up the other 10.87%?
Who cares?
Funny how the reasons why it’s flopping start with the price, then go into how the product sucks.
Even if it were cheaper… It would still suck, and it would still flop. I’m sure there’s the occasional moron that would buy it simply because it’s cheap, which is how some people think the world works. That’s not a sustainable business model.
That’s not a sustainable business model.
Microsoft made the BUY MARKET SHARE model work with the XBox, which itself is apparently incapable of making Microsoft a penny profit. But that’s because Microsoft made up for the losses with secondary sales: Games.
Google and Amazon are attempting the same fake-competition trickery with their Nexus and Fire OtherPads. Both have revenue streams from secondary sales despite them losing money on the actual OtherPads.
I personally can’t call fake-competition, buying market share to be actual ‘business’. Thus my alterna-term ‘biznizz’. It’s fakery from meagre companies who can’t created competitive products. It’s more akin to parasitism than capitalism. But all they want is money, and all they shall get is money. They’ll never deserve respect. They’ll never be more than meagre, lame companies until they decide to actually compete with their products.
No matter what MDN fanboys can say, the single reason MS Surface sales haven’t (yet) taken off is that, at least over where I am, they’re only available in MS Stores and online. There is no way I would get a tablet, let alone a Surface unless I’ve first had a chance to play with it. Change that, and things could change. That theory will be tested since Surfaces hit retail stores here soon, and I am looking forward to checking it out.
I for one have consistently, for decades now, invited the world to put Apple and Microsoft products side-by-side for comparison. I advocate this because i know perfectly well what products aim for quality for the benefit of the customer versus what products aim for making a buck at the expense of the customer.
So do it! Put ANY OtherPad next to an iPad and do the comparison. Please! I don’t mind waiting until Microsoft get their distribution act together…
What do you do with a kickstand?
Kick it, otherwise, it’s just a stand!! Why did they try to be hip and name their stand a kickstand, when it isn’t.
Went by a Best Buy to pick up something today and the Windows Tablets were sitting on display unused, unsought and unloved. The iPad and iPad mini displays were crowded with customers, shoppers and onlookers. This during the Christmas season for shopping.
A couple of miles away the Apple Store was packed with people shopping for and buying Macs, iPhones and iPads. Lots of iPhones and iPads. The Genius Bar (sort of) wasn’t even that full, but the store was.
I think that about sums it up.