“Microsoft Corp. has sold about 1.5 million Surface devices, people with knowledge of the company’s sales said, a slow start in its bid to crack the fast-growing tablet market to make up for slumping personal-computer demand,” Ian King and Dina Bass report for Bloomberg News.
“Microsoft has sold little more than a million of the Surface RT version and about 400,000 Surface Pros since their debuts, according to three people, who asked not to be named because sales haven’t yet been made public,” King and Bass report. “The company had ordered about 3 million Surface RTs, they said. Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS AG, had initially projected that Microsoft would sell 2 million Surface RT devices in the December quarter alone.”
MacDailyNews Take: Idiots.
King and Bass report, “By contrast, Apple Inc. sold 22.9 million iPads in the quarter that ended in December… Brendan Barnicle, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities, reduced revenue estimates for Microsoft’s current quarter, citing weak Surface demand. He projects the company will sell 600,000 tablets in the period, down from an earlier prediction of 1.4 million.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Ballmy’s sweating even more profusely than usual.
Wonder if the usually-delusional bast age has got that sinking feeling? If he doesn’t, he should.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Tayster” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Analyst: Microsoft’s Surface RT on track to join Zune and Kin in the great consumer electronics discount rack in the sky – March 13, 2013
Microsoft’s ‘Surface Pro’ tablet slammed by negative reviews – February 7, 2013
9 out of 10 businesses support Apple iPhones and iPads – February 6, 2013
Apple’s iPad dominates tablets with 81% Web usage share; Amazon Kindle Fire distant 2nd with 7.7% – February 6, 2013
The Verge reviews Microsoft’s Surface Pro: Too big, too fat, frustratingly poor battery life; it just feels limiting – February 6, 2013
Microsoft’s Windows RT: Circling the bowl – February 5, 2013
Windows 8 bloat: Microsoft’s 64GB Surface Pro will offer users only 23GB of available storage space – January 29, 2013
Microsoft doesn’t reveal Surface sales, and probably never will – January 24, 2013
Microsoft blames PC makers for Windows 8 flop – January 24, 2013
Fujitsu President: Weak demand for Microsoft’s Windows 8 killing PC Sales – December 28, 2012
Philip Greenspun: Microsoft’s Windows 8 is a Christmas gift for someone you hate – December 7, 2012
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
Click (snap)
Who the hello bought that many?
These guys have the need: http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/106328738/Ballast_Used_Mixed.html
Here’s a wonderful tip for sprucing up your garden. Dumpster dive at your local Microsoft office and create an elegant paving stone motif!
These guys also have a need:
“On-the-job training including learning business and operational processes and state-of-the-art technology (from metals recycling shredders to metal identification technology).”
http://www.usametalrecycling.com/about-us/careers/
If you take company employees out of the sales figures, it goes negative.
The same secret buyer that bought 1m BlackBerry Z10’s. In other words, dummy corporations set up by companies like BlackBerry and Microsoft to buy their own goods to inflate sales numbers. When BlackBerry announced that the 1m sale was with an established partner, they weren’t lying. It was the same dummy corporation they set up to buy their stupid tablets. They weren’t lying.
That’s all Ballmer could afford with the salary and stock hits hes’ taken in the past few years.
But I hear with the surface you get more OS for your money!! About 18 Gigabytes worth …
So it’s a total bargain.
I would bet Ballmy bought a bunch of the surface thingies and he channeled them straight to his garage.
I hear his garage is very big.
It’s big because he heard that is where great ideas started.
It didn’t work. Now he parks the iPhone herse in there. It is currently filling up with said Surfaces.
The Gates & Balmer kids are publicly forbidden from buying iPads & iPhones; so you can attribute a few sales to those clueless households…
Call CPS?
The understatement of the century. The only way anything tablet mobile from MS will “move” is if they are sold from free to $99 ala other tablets before they disappeared from the market. Sure you won’t make any money on them like XBox started out but eventually a few nickels & dimes will dribble in. Or get Zuned & “slam bam thank you Ballmer-girlie-man”. Maybe a more effective use of Microsoft money is to either start a bonfire or flush it down the crapper.
I’ll buy one for $99 for my wife to watch her Korean soaps, so I can get my Ipad back. I did buy sh*t brown Zune once for a $100 at CompUSA. Bought it for the 30GB drive and the FM radio and listening to audio books which I ripped from CD’s fom the public library. It has been retired for a long time..
I say build more! Demand is coming soon. I’m sure of it!
I shall not yield. Tis but a mere flesh wound!
Ni!
Or is it spelled, “Ne”…
Your arm’s off!
Classic!
Do they sell them in Australia? I haven’t actually noticed anybody using them, not even at my university. I’m surprised I haven’t seen them at my university as I see just about everything else there. Then again, should I be “surprised”?
They don’t flip properly Down Under.
Yes. Despite the best engineering efforts of Microsoft, they cannot figure out how to make the kickstand face backwards south of the equator.
Shipped or sold?
Ever the central question. What is ‘sold’ to Microsoft is ‘gathering dust’ at the retail shops and warehouses.
Windows 8 (and Surface by extension) is typical Microsoft thinking: Features, features, features!
Never mind that they work well or are at all well-conceived in their function. Microsoft was first to market with “tablets” and early to market with Windows Mobile . . . and Windows 8 will be known to the history books as the first “full featured” touch tablet OS. Problem is, no one wants something so bloated and painful to use (let alone bulky and ugly to lug around).
Apple will eventually meld the desktop and touch versions of OS X. I really do believe that. But I also believe it won’t happen until:
• CPUS/GPUS and other hardware features are both powerful and power efficient enough. They also have to get smaller.
• Battery technology improves so that the devices can last a minimum of 10 hours while running the extra bells and whistles of a full-fledged OS.
There will be day that comes when our phones and tablets can be the one device to rule them all, but it will be elegant, beautiful and make sense when it happens. And it will probably be done in a way most of us aren’t yet able to imagine. In short, in won’t look anything like Windows 8 and Surface.
Balmmy looks handsome. Any 18th century women would love to have him lead the house hold. However he would need to lay off the drink, and pipe. He would need to leave the dog alone. Stop all his hunting and fishing. Take up a towel, and put the dried dishes away for once. As a matter of fact. Put down that newspaper, get off your fat ass and do something, anything.
Apple only sold 22.9 million, thats a big slow slump in sales, supported by the many reports of lowered parts orders, and of course combined with the recent stock drops, its obvious that Apple can in no way compete with Microsoft in the tablet arena, which MS invented and championed in the first place.
Or something like that… What was the question again?
OH Shiny Thing!
darnite that figure is just for Christmas sales, not for the whole quarter. Microsoft may have invented the tablet as you point out but I still haven’t seen anybody using a Microsoft Surface, let alone poking a stick at one.
Don’t bug me, I’m doing my best wallstreet anacyst and tech journalist impression. 😀
This sort of stuff is reminding me of the three monkeys, see no evil (surface) hear no evil (zune) and soon to come speak no evil (Balmer won’t be doing the sweaty monkey dance anymore).
I was looking forward to Sweaty Monkey Dance II. Damn.
I can hear Balmy now: “I like our strategy. I like it a lot.”
Ya know, that bearded and hatted picture of Fearless Leader makes him look way too good, and we all know better.
Deckhand “Ahoy Capt Ballmer, iceberg dead ahead!”
Capt Ballmer “Do not alter course, stoke up the engines full steam ahead, do not doubt my winning strategy”.
Actually, it’s been said that, had Titanic hit the iceberg head-on, she would have been crunched at the bow but she would have survived. Because the captain swerved to miss, she was gashed so badly that the wound was fatal. Titanic is such a good analogy for Microsoft.
rounding error!
As soon as it goes on the discount rack, I’m getting one. But it would have to be pretty cheap.
Just like the Zune and Kin… I have not yet seen a single one in the wild!
Sometime in the past 2 years I came across an article on the size of the early adopter, developer and tech geek communities. Really a pretty astoundingly large group all in all. So a million and half units means virtually no sales to joe public or even corporate deployment. Almost any tech device that is unique and affordable within a discretionary budget will sell a million units. So there is bound to be overlap on a considerable number of these units with developers buying one of each. Really poor sales numbers if true and you know these facts can’t escape those at the top.
O Really?! What a shocking news!! 🙂
And their fucking commercials are awful! Especially the new Surface Pro commercials.
a click-click here, a click-click there
and a couple of lah-de-dahs
that’s the way we spend our day
in the merry old land of blahs.
As soon as I saw the photo of the captain of the Titanic, I cracked up for 5 minutes. It killed me.
Absolutely hilarious take by Mac Daily News.
I wonder if you could paste Ballmer’s face in the captain’s photo.