An ITProPortal report has published the opinions of industry analyst Patrick Moorhead with regards to the success of Microsoft’s tablet venture. He believes that Microsoft is actually quite unhappy with Dell, Lenovo and HP’s performance with Windows OS tablets and as a result are expanding the Surface RT internationally themselves to try and compensate.
“This new commercial channel thrust for Microsoft is significant and really shows their unhappiness with Dell, HP, and Lenovo’s efforts in tablets. Commercial markets are really the only place the PC OEMs are making decent margins and Microsoft has just entered their turf, most likely capturing some of the profits.”
However, despite Microsoft’s push Moorhead believes that Windows RT tablets may continue to struggle based on their performance so far.
“Surface has sold very poorly in its current U.S. channels as evidenced by the massive $900-million write-down and deep price cuts. I attribute that primarily to the lack of Windows RT applications and narrow distribution around the holiday selling season,” said Moorhead, principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy.
With ASUS and Acer almost as good as done in the Windows RT market it remains to be seen whether Microsoft and a select few other vendors will be able to revive the ailing tablet OS.
Image courtesy of Microsoft
Dell, HP and Lenovo went by market demands and not what MS wanted. Tablets are more easily damaged, people want to pay less for them and take a performance hit because it’s a convenience more than anything. When the performance and price go up, customers look more to near indestructible Thinkpads and the like. With present price and performance, it’s another niche product like ultrabooks.