Microsoft Surface sales fall by 26 percent | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Surface sales fall by 26 percent

engadget.com

17 pointstomjacu485 comments

I'm in the market for a new machine. The surface hardware looks decent. But I'm unwilling to accept Windows 10 in its current form. So I'll not be a customer until I get treated properly on the privacy and updates front.

No idea how many other people share these views and what the total effect is, but if they revised their policies here then they would regain some of the customers they have lost through their actions over the last few years. Though I won't forget GWX in a hurry...

PC manufacturers have tiny margins, maybe 2% on average (not including Apple of course). The Surface line has been a gun pointed at their heads. I'm not sure why MSFT is doing it, it can't be profitable and even if it was they can't switch their business model to Apples without huge dislocations.

Since windows pc makers have essentially lost the ability to do much R&D and Design because of their brutal margins, I could see the Surface line as a way for MSFT to take over design for the entire market, and give the manufacturers better hardware designs. But why isn't that happening?

The whole PC market is circling the drain and Microsoft doesn't want to get sucked down with it. The Surface is an effort to push PC hardware to higher standards, to show what the platform is capable of if you aim for something other than "cheapest possible".

> Since windows pc makers have essentially lost the ability to do much R&D and Design because of their brutal margins...

This is their own doing. They race to the bottom, they end up in a knife fight to the death. If HP, which has significant engineering chops, started making good hardware and focus their teams on making a few great products instead of a dizzying array of marginal ones they'd probably find more success.

For example: The HP Z1 is a great concept, but it barely gets any attention and is almost impossible to find in retail channels. Microsoft was able to trot out their version of same and it was as if this thing didn't even exist.

The Surface line is intended as a flagship device to show off Windows' strengths as an OS from the makers themselves. It fulfills the same purpose as Pixel for Android, and, y'know, all of Apple's lineup.

It's not intended to sell well solely to generate profit -- it's intended to sell well so that a higher proportion of in-the-wild machines running Windows will be ones with thoughtful design, not bottom-barrel $500 laptops with a crappy 1388x768 panel and a slow spinner drive. While it's not helpful to ban those from the Windows market (and concede to Chrome OS in the process), it's an effort to re-frame Windows' role from a "default" OS to an aspirational OS, shipped on aspirational devices.

The design transition you speak of isn't happening because the OEMs and Microsoft's interests are no longer exactly aligned. The AndroidChromeOS reality has graduated from vague vaporware to an actual force, and many OEMs already reuse the same hardware for two different laptops: one Chrome OS, one Windows. As a more capable Chrome OS that can now run Android Apps -- yes, we can argue ad nauseum about its limitations, but with everything being a website or coming from an App Store, more and more people simply don't care -- creeps further upmarket, Microsoft's investment in the Surface line becomes a competitive advantage that they can try to leverage.

It seems like this steeper-than-expected drop was the only reason why their revenue missed estimates, since the rest of the earnings report looked good. Since they're aware it's because of end-of-product lifecycle, this will hopefully be a gentle push to update it more often.

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