“Four little words from Microsoft CFO Amy Hood describe the tragic state of Microsoft’s mobile experiment: ‘negligible revenue from phones,'” Mark Hachman reports for PCWorld.
“Phone sales for the current quarter were bad, falling $730 million from the same period a year ago, Microsoft executives said Thursday during the company’s second-quarter earnings call,” Hachman reports. “But they can’t fall much further: Hood was referring to a forecast of the current quarter ending in June, when sales of all Microsoft-branded phones will apparently trickle off into oblivion.”
“Microsoft also said it suffered lower-than-expected sales of Surface Pro products, with an overall drop of 26 percent in Surface revenue,” Hachman reports. “While the company has repeatedly insisted Windows Phone isn’t dead, however, the slow fade of its own phones doesn’t help the platform’s prospects… Microsoft essentially paid $7.17 billion for a Nokia phone business that went nowhere.”
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote back in September 2013 on the occasion of Nokia unloading its handset business to Microsoft for a ridiculous $7.2 billion:
Steve Jobs killed Nokia long before [Microsoft’s Stephen] Elop got there to pull the plug.
“Microsoft’s Surface revenue fell to its lowest point in the last five quarters, with just $831 million in total revenue,” Hachman reports. “Microsoft hasn’t refreshed the Surface Pro series since Oct. 2015, when it launched the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book. ”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: After all these years, there’s still nothing that rivals basking in the warm schadenfreude of Microsoft failure!
A “tablet” with an identity crisis is not the future… If Microsoft were really sure of themselves in Jobsian fashion, they would have devoted all of their efforts to Windows RT/ARM tablets… iPad will continue to offer the only known quantity in the market, the only true “tablet” with any real developer support, and the only one with a massive and vibrant ecosystem (both hardware and software).
Apple’s iPad is the only tablet into which any sane person or business would ever invest their hard-earned money. If your company ever buys Microsoft Surface tablets – either of them, but especially Windows 8 Pro/Intel ones – get your resume ready. You’re stuck at a place that’s prone to making horrendous decisions and is hopelessly mired in the past.
As if they needed it, Microsoft’s “Surface” debacle is even more good news for Apple. — SteveJack, MacDailyNews, June 19, 2012
On that note, TGIF and, snap to it, interns: TTK!
SEE ALSO:
Fake news: Microsoft Surface vs. Apple iPad, Mac – April 28, 2017
Microsoft’s Surface Studio boondoggle – January 3, 2017
Apple’s new MacBook Pro outsold all other laptops in first five days – November 9, 2016
The debate is over: IBM confirms that Apple Macs are $535 less expensive than Windows PCs – October 20, 2016
A single quarter of iPad Pro sales will exceed the total of all Microsoft Surface tablets ever sold – November 24, 2015
Microsoft’s Suicide, er… ‘Surface’ – June 19, 2012
