There were plenty of things that doomed Surface RT's initial rollout to failure. It may have done well with focus groups, and I'm not convinced that it was an objectively poor product to the extent that it was guaranteed to fail. But right off the bat they had poor marketing combined with poor distribution (Surfaces were only available online or in Microsoft stores, of which there aren't very many, so very few people could try before buying). Even once they started allowing Surfaces to be sold through other physical retailers, they did a poor job training salespeople and getting attractive placement in stores. And the RT is also just a hard product to sell - there are lots of aspects that are really nice, but it's lacking a simple elevator pitch.