“Microsoft seemed very pleased with itself yesterday, as their Surface franchise managed over $1 billion in global sales for the December quarter,” Mark Reschke writes for T-GAAP. “While Microsoft is trumpeting the sales figure, based on an average selling price of $1,000, Microsoft many not have actually sold 1 million Surface devices.”
“Surface revenues rose from $908 million during the September quarter to $1.1 billion in the December quarter. Analysts expected sales of Surface would grow during the largest consumer quarter of the year, but with Microsoft’s massive advertising campaign, the software giant still cannot figure out how to sell over a million of their devices during the largest consumer hardware sales season of the year,” Reschke writes. “Watching the Redmond-based company jump up and down over such weak sales that was backed by a massive advertising campaign is almost unnerving to watch. The whole much ado about nothing seems downright Ballmer-esque.”
“Meanwhile Apple’s record Mac sales are astounding and defy the economy and competition,” Reschke writes. “Could it be that Microsoft’s Surface advertising is selling Macbook Airs? Within every Surface ad, Microsoft compares its product to the MacBook Air. Essentially, Microsoft is asking people go into Best Buy or visit an Apple retail store and compare the Surface against the MacBook Air. Apparently people are and Apple is seeing record Mac sales as a result… There is a strong correlation between record Mac sales and Microsoft’s record advertising.”
Read more in the full article here.
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