Burned relationships and high prices are no way to launch a product, son.
Now that the dust is settling on the Microsoft Surface tablet, all of the details are coming out, and it looks like this whole tablet adventure is turning into one big boondoggle, and given the shaky state of things, Microsoft can’t afford any missteps.
For more than 20 years, Microsoft has been in a very select hardware business. It limited itself to input devices – keyboards and mice – along with the Xbox console. Despite making PC operating systems, it’s never gone into the PC business, and has yet to make a smartphone despite producing an OS.
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It’s a tricky balancing act for Microsoft. It’s watching Apple take off like a rocket because it controls the hardware and the software and wondering how to close its gap with OEMs. At the same time, let’s not forget that Microsoft hasn’t been all that kind to OEMs in the past. The fallout of the FTC investigations in the 1990s showed that the company bullied OEMs into not carrying competitive operating systems like DR-DOS and OS/2.
And it looks like things didn’t go much better this time. According to Reuters, Microsoft kept its OEM partners in the dark on Surface. Acer and Asus didn’t learn about it until Steve Ballmer took the stage and introduced the device. This is not a good way to manage relations.
This is especially true since Microsoft apparently has had this in the works since 2010, when HP bought Palm. I had figured that Microsoft created Surface as a proof of concept, to show its partners how it’s done. It would be a similar model to the Google Nexus phone. Google isn’t really serious about competing with Samsung, et al, it just wants to show off a great example of a phone.
And if the price rumors on Surface are true, that’s about all Surface will be: a glorified demo. DigiTimes, the Taiwan-based hardware news site, reports that the ARM-based device will be at least $599 while the x86 device will be $799. I’ll bet Tim Cook choked on his favorite energy bar laughing at that news.
That price may be high, but don’t discount Microsoft’s willingness to get this right. It has the most to lose at this point, since it’s totally invested in Windows 8 and Metro. How many years of people complaining about bloatware choking their PCs did it take for Microsoft to come out with the Signature PCs, which are basically laptops from its OEM partners without the bloatware? I have to ask why it took Microsoft to do it and this long to respond.
Surface looks like a neat piece of hardware. If it motivates HP, Dell, Acer, Asus, etc., to get off their rears and make tablets that are truly competitive with Apple, then Microsoft will have done its job. But they could have done it a little better.
