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Microsoft Surface Sales Fall Short Of Expectations

By: , IntoMobile
Friday, March 15th, 2013 at 1:22 PM
surface

Bloomberg is reporting today that Microsoft is making slow progress in entering the tablet market, with only 1.5 million Surface devices being sold in the quarter ending last December. One million of those units are the Surface RT version, with the other 400,000 or so being the Surface Pro version. Microsoft had projected it would sell 2 million units in that quarter, and had ordered three million units to be distributed.

To quickly put that in perspective, Apple sold 22.9 million iPads in the same quarter, with worldwide tablet sales reaching 128.3 million units in 2013.

Microsoft has been clamoring to enter the smartphone and tablet market, a realm that is dominated by Google and Apple. Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 platform has yet to take off, garnering around 7% of the mobile market. Surface, Microsoft’s tablet platform is in a similar boat. For both platforms, one of the biggest problems is the lack of apps.

This comes at a pivotal time for Microsoft, as notebook and laptop sales are expected to drop 18 percent in the first quarter of 2013. The tablet market, however, is expected to have a boon this year, with shipments possibly jumping 49 percent in 2013 to 190.9 million units, and for the first time in history, outselling notebook computers.

Time will tell if Microsoft’s Surface will break into the market this year and grab Microsoft some profit in a time when its bread and butter PC sales are expected to slump. As more apps are created for the platform and Microsoft retools it’s marketing blitz, we may see the Surface gain in popularity.

[Via: Bloomberg]

About The Author

Ian Kersey

Raised in rural Northern California, Ian spent his early years embroiled in video games, comic books, and making spaceships out of Legos. He escaped to San Francisco in the early 2000's, mastering the art of coffee making to pay his bills. Ian then attended Mosaic Art school in Italy, returning to the bay area afterwards, and worked on a few art projects of his own. Harnessing his long-dorment nerd powers, Ian now spends his days trolling the interwebz to bring you the most awesome mobile news, ever.

  • WebUser

    “To quickly put that in perspective”, but you didn’t do that.
    It’s a another troll article, what a stupid world.

  • Gregory C Newman

    yoo they sold 400000 surface pro’s in one month. that is pretty good considering how much they cost. and would have sold more than that is they had put the Surface pro on sale before they put the look alike twin the Windows Rt tablets on the market. in the end windows tablets may not sell as well as Ipads but Windows PC users and PC fans do not care about that because at last Microsoft has a smooth operating Tablet OS when it is running on a tablet with an Intel i5 or i7 CPU tablet that will run full sized Windows desktop/Server programs. the surface Pro will soon be released to the world market and will sell out because Microsoft is more popular overseas than in America strange as it may seem.