Analyst says Surface could hurt Ultrabook, Windows 8 tablets Taiwanese analyst outfit Trendforce thinks Microsoft’s forthcoming Surface devices will cannibalise the market for ultrabooks, put price pressure on Android tablets and confuse consumers. The analysts’ WitsView service recently published a note in which research director Eric Chiou says that Surface devices’ 32GB of storage is …
The xbox isn't the number one console by any means. It was clearly beaten by the Nintendo wii and is only just barely beating the PS3. I'd even say that's the worst example to pick.
To his credit he is probably right in regards to its effects on ultrabook and android tablet sales. It goes without saying given how poorly made android tablets are.
While there are manufacturers exploiting the mad rush to tablet utopia (tabletopia?) by offering up poor quality devices rushed to market to take advantage of the public's feeding frenzy; anything which costs upwards of $350.00 is not of low quality. It is generally a bad idea to buy a $149.00 tablet from a manufacturer whose name you first saw on the box in which your treasure was packed. Ignoring warning signs such as improperly translated marketing blurbs replete with stilted grammar and spelling, and you get what you paid for.
The position that all of the class of tablets that run Android are poorly made is an erroneous syllogism that is pythonesque in nature given that even the revered iPad can run the Android OS.
I doubt that MS will be under-pricing the devices to any significant degree. The logic is slightly flawed - MS do not monopolize the hardware side of their business and other manufacturers can bring lower-cost Win8 devices to market (and they will). So if MS want low-cost Win8 devices out there, they don't have to make them themselves. We don't even know if the Surface will start a long-term product line by MS or if this is just a kick to the other manufacturers to up their game. The latter is a big possibility.
Indeed it is. Redmond have already said that they will be pricing those two products at similar price-points to where the OEMs will be selling similar classes of products. This suggests that as long as the OEMs do not have the same insane ambitions as they had when the first Android tablets came out (when they were expecting to be able to charge more than Apple were for the original iPad FFS!) MS is not intending to be particularly aggressive towards its own industry partners as far as pricing is concerned. Furthermore Redmond are not in a position to be an "own producer" (without a substantial and expensive strategic shift that would take several years to implement) in the way Apple are and cannot easily take the place of the OEMs as far as that side of the business is concerned. If of course the OEMs are unwilling to read the memo as far as pricing is concerned (the ultrabook segment being largely an unfortunate example at the moment) then things may change in the longer term. However, it won't be this year or next!
Apple are not an own producer. They are in effect the marketing arm of FOXCON, while apple design their goods someone else always produces them. This is a very common scene in many industries. I am unable to see any difference between MS or apple asking an OEM to produce a box and then selling it as their own.
I do wonder what all the fuss is about, slates have been out of use for years and these 'new' versions are a recycling of past ideas of form and function. (School slates of course had rounded corners on their wooden frames for safety reasons.)
The market is currently absorbing these device in respectable numbers but how finite is the market? How far can the recyled ideas go? In other words once all the people who think they want one are satisfied you only have the replacement market to serve. Sunk costs on the aplets mean that as the battery dies, users will tend to replace dieing devices with items from the same maker as long as the aplet can be ported over.
So far as pricing goes, 'free' would probably be too much for me to pay for any of them and as for one with an apple on it, you could not even pay me to take it away.
"Apple are not an own producer. They are in effect the marketing arm of FOXCON, while apple design their goods someone else always produces them. This is a very common scene in many industries. I am unable to see any difference between MS or apple asking an OEM to produce a box and then selling it as their own"
I'd hardly call Apple the marketing arm of Foxcon. Apple are a pretty impressive company that produce all their own software on multiple platforms. I mean these days, Macs are actually Intel machines, but the software and design is what makes them different. But that's really beside the main point which is that there is a very great difference between "MS or apple asking an OEM to produce a box and then selling it as their own". Namely that Apple are the only ones that make their machines. There are many competing manufacturers producing Windows machines. The supposition of the analyst is that MS want to transition to an Apple model, but as another poster points out, it would be a very, very long process to move to a hardware monopoly even if it were possible. So really it looks more like this is just a shot across the bows from MS to get other manufacturers to up their game. It's a win-win for MS. If the Surface sells well, that shows Win8 in a good light and promotes themselves. If other manufacturers up their game and produce something better, that's a win for MS as well.
"I do wonder what all the fuss is about, slates have been out of use for years and these 'new' versions are a recycling of past ideas of form and function. (School slates of course had rounded corners on their wooden frames for safety reasons.)"
When it's time for steam engines, steam engines appear. I recall Neal Stephenson saying that though I think he may have nicked it from somewhere. Basically, sometimes you have to wait for the time to be right. Microsoft were producing tablets and hybrids for years before the iPad came out. They were good for some things, but the technology of the time made them big, heavy things with limited screen sensitivity and responsiveness. Apple timed things just right - they waited until the technology was there for something light and quick and then leveraged their success with phones into a scaled up tablet. It was steam engine time - the conditions for success were just right. You had the technology and wireless internet becoming pervasive and affordable. That's what all the fuss is about. You call it recycling of past ideas of form and function, but you might as well say a modern jet is a recycling of the Wright brother's work. Things like the Surface were not possible ten years ago and if they had been the wireless Internet wasn't everywhere or cheap enough... It's basically a tablet that you can also be productive on. I think it's going to sell great.
"So far as pricing goes, 'free' would probably be too much for me to pay for any of them and as for one with an apple on it, you could not even pay me to take it away."
Well I'm not an Apple user, but I suspect that's hyperbole. They're good machines as far as I can see. At any rate, you've clearly marked yourself as not the target market. Good for you. Rest of us are going to love having a ultrabook light device that we can both work on and sofa-surf on and take notes on with a stylus and have multi-user accounts on and connect standard interfaces to...
Indeed. Furthermore that word "monopoly" also has resonance here. Although Apple are very big indeed in tablet space they are still a minor player in pc-space as a whole in terms of the number of units shifted. That means that, for the time being at any rate, the competition authorities are not especially worried. However, Redmond is still the dominant software force in personal computers as a whole. If they attempted to move towards the Apple model (except in a very limited way within tablet space) the bells would not just ring at, for example, the DoJ in the States, they would probably register on the Richter scale. For that reason alone MS would likely be bloody careful before they started any major strategic shift of that kind.
There are so many hypotheticals in this "analysis" that - as usual - it is utterly meaningless.
Yes, MS may subsidise the price - like Amazon and Google already do with their tablets. But, unlike those two, MS doesn't have much in the way of content or services to recoup profits from (they're going to have to bundle Office anyway).
Yes, Surface may disrupt Ultrabooks - but they're just a marketing attempt by Intel anyway, which doesn't look wildly successful at the moment anyway...
This is yet another bit of random speculation dressed up as analysis, enlightening nothing.
That is indeed a point. However, I would distinguish here between the Windows RT version of the "Surface" where your point indisputably applies and the Win 8 Pro version where Office will not be bundled with the device.
Why does no one remember the win app store when discussing win8? Metro apps are locked to the store, Surface gobbles cheap broadband bandwidth so MS get to keep most of their 20-30% cut without mobile carriers charging them. There's a huge pot of gold MS are chasing, enough to make them consider subsidies at least.
I don't believe tbeyll subsidize the less locked down pro version but I don't believe that's more than window dressing for the RT product anyway.
Eric Chiou says that Surface devices’ 32GB of storage is a higher spec than that on most ten-inch Android tablets, justifying a higher price of US$599
So let me get this straight the guy is saying it's got more storage than the equivlient androids but it's also going to cost more?
More storage = more money. Wow this guy is a genius he must be the first person to work this correlation out
"Taiwanese analyst outfit Trendforce thinks Microsoft’s forthcoming Surface devices will cannibalise the market for ultrabooks, put price pressure on Android tablets and confuse consumers."
I have no idea about how good these devices are going to be, but boy they sound like great fun already... even if I am only going to be a spectator! Maybe *because* I am only going to be a spectator!
Taiwanese analyst outfit Trendforce thinks Microsoft’s forthcoming Surface devices will cannibalise the market for ultrabooks
I hope these Surface devices don't mind vegetarian food because there's not much meat on the Ultrabook market to cannibalise if recent sales figures are anything to go by
I thought NAND flash cost about $1/Gb in volume in which case why does Eric Chiou imply bump from 16Gb to 32 Gb would add $100 to retail price?
Didn't you get the memo? Microsoft are copying Apples business model. That includes charging double for storage than other competitors
"Didn't you get the memo? Microsoft are copying Apples business model."
No, this guy is wildly speculating that MS will do an Apple.
Given memory would actually cost about $30, they could probably hit a $499 price point just by forgoing the ridiculous memory markup everyone else seem to favour, without needing any subsidies.
Given MS is starting well behind everyone else, it might be a good idea to hit the same price point as everyone else, but offer more memory - they'll need to offer *something* extra/different to catch up...
Right - but throughout the rest of the website when written as text, including instances on that very same page they've used 'Xbox
you have to remember that this is a company who ran a marketing campaign with "what has information overload done to us" for a search engine. So they were saying when we search we should have find less information?
Microsoft have never been great at branding and marketing. This is a further example. XBOX on the console and Xbox on the site....... Just one example along with their forever changing web based email service and countless other bad branding / marketing decisions
Android tablets to be replaced by windows 8? Who makes up these headlines. I guess the same people who think winpho7 was going to replace andoird in phones across the globe.
People don't use Android because windows 8 isn't available, they use android because they want to.
And my 32GB transformer prime is cheaper, with added keyboard dock.
Full blown desktop OS on a tablet? If they do, they'll be sorely disappointed. WIndows 8 RT is not Windows 8, and Metro is a design experiment that belongs on the occasional smartphone, to be fiddled with before going straight back to Go Launcher EX or some other, more usable equivalent.
I believe Microsoft tried XP for Tablets a while back and it was a resounding failure.
And has anybody who thinks Android isn't suitable for tablets even tried ICS on a 10" screen yet? Personally I still like the old 2.x grid of icons, but for people who like being blinded by shiny, ICS definitely has a gleam to it.
I have an Asus Transformer running ICS - I think the device is great and I love the OS. ICS is a great tablet OS. However, I wouldn't recommend it or any other Android tablet to anyone else. I spent quite a bit of time with a friend's iPad and I would pit ICS against iOS anyday but the range of apps available for the iPad is in a different league. Both in quality and quantity the things you can get the iPad to do, and do well, it light years ahead. A lot of good quality iPad apps are either simply not available on Android (and their equivalents poor in comparison) or they are available either solely for phones or in a format which is basically a phone app with some minor modifications for a tablet (which looks kind of okay until you see how much extra work they've put into the actual iPad app).
Sorry, the OEM's for Android tablets have done a really bad job in getting decent tablets out there at affordable prices - and by "out there" I don't mean that they exist, I mean that they are in front of the general public and therefore likely to be bought. Go to Argos / Comet / Currys etc and see just how many models are out there on display, available to be played with and at what prices. And check Amazon - or a myriad of computer box shifters like Ebuyer or Misco. The Android tablets are sporadic, badly marketed and often over priced. Combine the shortcomings of the apps and the OEM's and Apple is essentially sitting pretty in the tablet space. If MS are successful with their offerings it will most likely be Android that gets squeezed, not Apple.
From my point of view... IF the Surface is a success (which I do hope) we won't have a need for ultrabooks! The tablet will finally replace the Laptop. The world has just been waiting for a decent tablet with a real OS and not a phone OS.
My fingers are crossed for a tablet which will take Windows and Linux dual booting and which is as sleek as the iPad. Mmmmm <3
Caught between a rock and a hard place.
They release an attractive product themselves in an attempt to demonstrate what they want Win8 tablets to achieve (largely due to fairly mediocre design efforts by the OEMs on laptops over recent years).
If they price too low (subsidy for example), it'll sell well, but MS will make less money on it, the OEMs will be hacked off about a partner competing aggressively with them, which will tempt them to look elsewhere (Android/Linux fanboys will be happy though).
Price too high and it will sell poorly. The OEMs stay happy, but it won't make much of an example to them with regards to design and won't necessarily tempt them to put more effort into their own Windows tablets.
Apple have an advantage in that they aren't as dependent on third party hardware to shift their OS, so they can (to some extent) be aggressive against manufacturers. MS don't currently have that luxury. In some respects, in the client market, maybe MS need to take a hard look at which road they want to go down - own their own hardware/software stack (Apple), or stick to software and try to support the OEMs (like MS of old and Google now).
This pickle Microsoft find themselves in is a direct result of being late to market. They can't set prices; they have to follow. Apple have sewn up the market in setting the leading technology (iPad) and have set the price. Anything near Apple's price will naturally be compared with the market leader (it sounds just like a Golf). If you've low quality offerings, you can only race to the bottom, hence all the cheapo tat running Android.
Producing an equivalent product to the iPad will be difficult as Apple have really sewn up the manufacturing systems with massive economies of scale, not to mention shed loads of lawyers.
Then there's the issue of a version 1 product. The iPad is approaching it's 6th iteration of the underlying software. Unlike Microsoft, Apple still keep the keyboard/window/mouse-centric Mac OSX separate from the tablet-centric iOS. Microsoft are embarking on releasing their first proper tablet OS whilst confusing the world with "it's Windows everywhere", running the risk of damaging their core desktop OS in the process.
It's such fun watching this. It's like watching a playground fight between two bullies.
Need a popcorn icon:-)
"...The iPad is approaching it's 6th iteration of the underlying software..."
The MS Surface will be based on the NT kernel, Windows 8 will be the - err - eighth major release of Windows NT for a workstation. This is also a "proper" major release, not just a few bug fixes, a couple of tweaks and a bell or whistle or two. NT goes back to the early 90s, iOS goes back about four years yet somehow has nearly the same amount of "major" releases.
"Windows 8 will be the - err - eighth major release of Windows NT"
Yes, but purely by co-incidence. The versions are: 3, 3.5, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 6.1 & 6.2. No small child who had just learned how to count up to 8 would accept that as a proper sequence.
"This is also a "proper" major release, not just a few bug fixes, a couple of tweaks and a bell or whistle or two."
Ah, now there I'd have to disagree, since I've yet to hear of any major differences between Vista, 7 and 8. Plenty of bug fixes and two changes of eye candy, but nothing I'd call worthy of a major version bump. But don't just take *my* word for it. Ask the kernel developers at Microsoft: 6, 6.1, 6.2. See the pattern, there?
> 8th version of NT
Errm, not on a tablet it ain't. It'll be the first version of the new Metro tablet which has "been written from the ground up". MS call it artie (RT); that's their first version.
You can't use a plain NT kernel on a tablet for exactly the same reasons you can't use NT on a phone; battery life. This is why iOS has a completely different scheduler that doesn't multi-task in the normal way (time slicing with background applications). This is why Microsoft's original tablets sucked donkey balls; massive lumps of plastic with sod all battery life running applications which were not optimised for tablets (e.g. finger/stylus).
The fact that you claim NT is on its 8th iteration (3.1, 3.5, 3.51, 4, 5, 5.1, 6, 6.1) means you've missed the point and are listening to Microsoft too much; Microsoft want you to think that RT == NT but in reality RT != NT.
On a tablet it's the first iteration (8).
Ultrabooks are trying to be Macbook Airs, and are just as expensive. Result: anyone who wants a Macbook Air buys a real Macbook Air; everyone else just buys a cheaper laptop.
Surface could end up the same: anyone who wants an iPad buys an iPad, and everyone else buys a Nexus or whatever.
Microsoft's one potential killer feature is Office. But they are throwing this away by splitting the market: you have to choose ARM (= not really Windows, doesn't run Windows software, but comes with free Office) versus Intel (= real Windows, but you have to buy Office just like a laptop)
Could you blame consumers if they threw up their hands in confusion, bought an iPad, and made do with iWork?
There are too many factors at play to make such a supposition.
Price
Availability
Ease of use
Design/appeal
Mindshare:
- Branding (a.k.a. "reality distortion field effect)
- Software support (productivity, games, specialist apps)
- The "ecosystem" (peripherals, extensions)
And eventually, momentum (the "everybody else is using it, so it's a comfortable choice" thing)
I am not rooting for any platform here, all have their ups and downs. The more the merrier though, competition benefits consumers.
If Microsoft really wants to sell their newfangled tablets (or phones for that matter) - one step towards the solution is simple: REBRAND THE NAME.
I don't mean "surface", which is pretty standard in today's nonesense/cool naming scheme. I mean don't label your phone OS WIndows - because Windows has zero cool factor for young/hip people who might be tempted to buy one. Make a new brand - quirky, original, non-corporate or something. Take the Windows/Microsoft name as far away as possible because, whatever your opinion of Microsoft it's brand is:
(a)boring, plain, standard
(b)corporate and stuffy
(c)not-cutting-edge.
It's simple. What fashionable person (and these are the people who buy tablet/toys) is going to see the "Microsoft Surface" running "WIndows RT" or whatever, and think "Cool!"? Nobody. They're going to think, "Windows? Ugh, I sit in front of Windows from 9 to 5 every day. Show me something different!"
It's a bit of a shallow analysis, and neglects the terrible yield issues that are happening with the rather wonderful case, built to micron tolerances. They already simplified the process once, and the big chinese manufacturers are having trouble scaling the process up cheaply. That could harm the launch, making MS a bit of a late mover.
Anyway, I do wonder how much traction there will be for the ARM based surface, as cool as the industrial design may be. Another ecosystem, another app store, you know the drill. That said, I personally could find a use for one of the x86 models, if drivers are good enough under Linux by then, or you can install Win7 on there.
However, the point about confusing the market is fair, the business of two different architectures will be lost on a lot of people, and the distinction between the offers. It certainly has in some of the comments threads on here, let alone amongst the Rory Cellan-Joneses of this world.
(Disclaimer, I have iOS and Android tablets, so am more a user of negotiable virtue than an advocate of any particular platform)
Simon Sharwood speaks of Microsoft 8 Surface Tablet "expected" sales of 4 million as if this is factual and inevitable.
Not in many years has technology reporting been so blatantly biased as to render the article writer an official Microsoft advertising representative (dupe), which is not only devious but demonstrates a lack of clear thinking on the part of someone who is "supposed" to report in a reasonable objective manner.
The Register need to get more competent and credible article authors.
Is 4million for both versions or just the RT? And at what price? Or is that 4 million regardless of price?
And people who want a full blown desktop OS on a tablet fail, as MS have done, to realise that tablets are not replacements for laptops. I believe that there will be a lot of very disappointed people.
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