Microsoft has so far earned a total of 853 million dollars with its surface tablets. This emerges from a communication of the company to the american financial supervisory authority SEC. In the quarterly report, the business with the new tablets was not listed separately.
In the period up to the end of june, however, microsoft had to write off 900 million dollars on the loss in value of previously unsold advices. Industry insiders speculate that the group is stuck with around six million surface RT. And high advertising expenses were added.
The first surface RT with a chip from the british designer ARM and a slimmed-down version of the operating system was launched on the market in october. In february, the youngest surface pro model with a full windows system followed, which according to microsoft’s presentation is to establish a new device category. Microsoft recently tried to accelerate sales of the devices with significant price reductions and discount campaigns, especially for schools.
Despite the initially sobering balance sheet, microsoft wants to demonstrate staying power in the tablet market. The price cuts and the availability of the devices in more countries will help surface better position itself for long-term success, a microsoft spokesperson told the wall street journal.
Surface is the first tablet from microsoft’s own production. The devices are also intended to stimulate sales of the new windows 8 operating system, which is currently suffering from the continuing weakness of the PC market. After its launch, the software group’s traditional hardware partners took their time before bringing the first devices with windows 8 onto the market. Windows 8 is especially designed for operation via a touch display.
With the surface, microsoft is competing against the now established competition of apple’s ipad and a number of tablets with google’s android operating system. According to calculations by the "wall street journal", microsoft has sold around 1.7 million surface tablets to date; the financial news agency bloomberg had recently calculated 1.5 million units. Competitor apple, on the other hand, sold 14.6 million ipads in the most recent quarter alone.