Last month Microsoft announced two tablet devices, one called Surface, the other called Surface Pro. These are the company’s first computers and to many they represent the start of a new era at Microsoft. Before the Surface tablets, people thought of Microsoft as a software company. Every two to three years they’d pop out an operating system, ship it to their partners, and then those partners would be responsible for making sure consumers bought Windows computers. With Surface, Microsoft is now competing against the very same companies that were responsible for their success for the past two and a half decades. Charlie Rose recently sat down with Bill Gates to ask him about what he thinks about Surface. Here’s his answer:
“I actually believe you can have the best of both worlds. You can have a rich eco-system of manufacturers and you can have a few signature devices that show off, wow, what’s the difference between a tablet and a PC? You can get everything you like about a tablet, everything you like a PC, all in one device. That should change the way people look at things.”
Make no mistake, Microsoft is taking a huge bet with Windows 8 and Surface. Between that OS and two two devices, the company is essentially rebooting everything that everyone knows about them. We could point to the iPad and say Apple is to blame for all this, but we think there’s a bigger story here that’s not being talked about. Microsoft is frankly a little tired of seeing ASUS, Acer, HP, and everyone else create clones of the MacBook Air and then put Windows on them. If Microsoft thinks they can do a better job at making PCs themselves, then why not?
They have the money, they have the time, and they most definitely have the brains.
[Via: The Verge]