Surface Pro 3 marketing woes and review round up

[rowspaxe]

I guess I don't like that Microsoft shows the keyboard in the advertisements, claims it can replace your laptop and every demo set up in their own stores has a keyborad attached... and knowing Microsoft, it will be shelved in a year or so.

Yes and yes.

I've seen the tablet and keyboard with a $799 tag: that is dishonest.

Its one thing to be "services and devices" company (Ballmer), its another to be "services and device" company.

It just doesnt seem like a long term thing.

 

[rowspaxe]

On top of that, MS's hybrid tablet/laptop vision requires touchscreens, which adds a premium and ups the base pricepoint. Part of why W8 failed in the initial rollout is because MS's OEM's were trying to keep things cheap and stick with the commodity hardware model in spite of Apple whooping their ass.

I think you can look at both vista and windows 8 as attempts to spur sales in more expensive hardware that somehow the oem's were unprepared to take advantage of.

The intel "ultrabook" designation--which i thought was a joke--does seem to have been a successful catalyst for higher level hardware development on the pc side.

Apple has quietly discounted their pc's over the last 5 years and sales are way up. Apple--a great company-- has benefitted greatly from having such weak competitors.

 

[MozMan68]

I never saw Surface 2 sales figures. I just know they took about a billion dollar loss on the first Surface. Any link for that? Windows phone marketshare was somewhere in the 3.5% range the last time I looked. There were some other countries where it was higher, but this article today at BGR doesn't sound too good.

http://bgr.com/2014/07/01/windows-phone-market-share-3/

Yep...original was a disaster from a sales perspective, but the 1st quarterly sales of the Surface 2 units was double that of the entire prior year and nearly (not quite, but nearly) offset the write down they had to take from the inventory on the original units.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/23/5338162/microsoft-q2-2014-financial-earnings

 

[AppleScruff1]

Yep...original was a disaster from a sales perspective, but the 1st quarterly sales of the Surface 2 units was double that of the entire prior year and nearly (not quite, but nearly) offset the write down they had to take from the inventory on the original units.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/23/5338162/microsoft-q2-2014-financial-earnings

Thanks for the link. While sales doubled, per the article Microsoft still lost money on the Surface for the quarter. It will be interesting to see how it does in the upcoming quarter.

Quote:
Surface revenue may have increased quarter-on-quarter to $893 million and year-over-year, but Microsoft also notes the Surface cost of revenue was $932 million in the latest quarter. In other words, Microsoft lost $39 million on Surface during its latest quarter.



According to The Verge, Q3 Surface sales were $494 million, yet they say that was a 50% increase, so they must mean year over year as this shows almost a 40% decrease in revenue from Q2. It looks like the sales are all over the place.

http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/24/5650126/microsoft-q3-2014-financial-earnings

 

[Liquorpuki]

I never thought of it that way, but that's a good point. I guess I don't like that Microsoft shows the keyboard in the advertisements, claims it can replace your laptop and every demo set up in their own stores has a keyborad attached.

Reddit asked MS in the SP3 AMA why they don't include the keyboard. They said they originally bundled it with the first Surface but found people wanted to pick their own color keyboard cover and that some people preferred a BT keyboard instead of the cover. Also said their third party retailers did not want to bundle.

The first part isn't entirely accurate because they only bundled the cover with the RT, not the Pro.

I don't see why they couldn't have done both. Just include a voucher that serves as either a rebate or free cover. Or offer it bundled online.

Marketing and execution will always be MS's weak points.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Reddit asked MS in the SP3 AMA why they don't include the keyboard. They said they originally bundled it with the first Surface but found people wanted to pick their own color keyboard cover and that some people preferred a BT keyboard instead of the cover. Also said their third party retailers did not want to bundle.

The first part isn't entirely accurate because they only bundled the cover with the RT, not the Pro.

I don't see why they couldn't have done both. Just include a voucher that serves as either a rebate or free cover. Or offer it bundled online.

Marketing and execution will always be MS's weak points.

If memory serves me correct, they actually did offer a bundle with the first Surface Pro for a short time. I think there was a bundle price for 128GB with the Touch Cover, but no option to buy it without the cover or a bundle with the Type Cover. So initially if you wanted the 128GB Surface Pro, you had to buy it with the Touch Cover and that was it. I think it only stayed that way for a few months. You could buy the 64GB with a bundle or without. I asked the Microsoft Rep why you couldn't buy the 128 without a keyboard so I could buy the Type cover and I'll never forget the brilliant answer he gave, "Because that's the way we are doing it". Idiotic marketing on that one.

And what's so hard about allowing people to pick their keyboard color at the point of sale? $999 and pick your color. $10 extra for the type cover over the touch. It's not rocket science, it's common sense. But sometimes they seem to have no common sense at all. It's a shame too, I think the Pro is a great product and will continue to get better, but I also wouldn't be shocked if I read next week that they were discontinuing it. I also think that Windows Phone 8.1 is a good competitor to iOS and Android. It is a refreshing alternative.

 

[sracer]

And what's so hard about allowing people to pick their keyboard color at the point of sale? $999 and pick your color. $10 extra for the type cover over the touch. It's not rocket science, it's common sense. But sometimes they seem to have no common sense at all. It's a shame too, I think the Pro is a great product and will continue to get better, but I also wouldn't be shocked if I read next week that they were discontinuing it. I also think that Windows Phone 8.1 is a good competitor to iOS and Android. It is a refreshing alternative.

That makes a lot of sense.