You may have seen this guy recently. He’s Steven Sinofsky and showed us Microsoft Surface on stage. Today he quit Microsoft, and you’ll no doubt see headlines suggesting that the company is struggling due to the “modest sales” and his departure.
Paul Thurrot has managed to grab the internal Microsoft email from Steven Sinofsky which attempts to quell the inevitable rumours…
Some might notice a bit of chatter speculating about this decision or timing. I can assure you that none could be true as this was a personal and private choice that in no way reflects any speculation or theories one might read—about me, opportunity, the company or its leadership.
Tami Reller has been moved to lead business and marketing strategy for Surface, whilst Julie Larson-Green will lead Windows engineering. Steven Sinofsky has worked for Microsoft since 1989.
Links – WinSupersite – Le Paisien
I think the modest sales are down to poor pricing, when it first “surfaced” there were rumours of a possible £200 price tag. This slowly seemed to creep up as interest rose, until at fever pitch Balmer started on about a much higher price. Now look its £400 plus £100 for the £10 keyboard. Interest is waning in the Surface RT, though they’re managing to keep up the pace with WP8 even in the face of the Nexus4. Lower the pissing price microsoft to something more reasonable. The Nexus 10 is a lot less and a lot more capable. Bundling Office and saying its a bargain just doesn’t compute if they’re paying exorbitant prices for the tablet in the first place.
I’m angry and tired, that is all.
I wonder what ‘modest sales’ actually means. Probably more like ‘poor sales’. I totally agree on the price-point issue though. This is absolutely key, and I think MS have done themselves a disservice by pricing them (roughly) equal to the iPad.
What does interest me, however, is the business take-up of these devices. Usually big corporates go Microsoft by default, because the devices tend to have good lock-down and security capabilities, and allow more centralised control.
Certainly from where I stand, it seems that large corporations have no idea what to do with their mobile devices at the moment. And no wonder – it’s really confusing.
There does seem to be a trend of ‘BYOD’ (Bring Your Own Device) amongst the Blue Chips. They seem to give a stipend allowing the purchase of pretty much whichever device you like, just as long as it’s on an ‘approved’ list. I see this as being disastrous for the likes of Microsoft, as it means their biggest selling points are effectively moot, and desirability becomes the defining factor.
When you can get a roughly decent Ultrabook for roughly the same money as the Surface, though, it does beg the question why on earth you’d buy the MS tablet. If you really want something on which to do a lot of data input, wouldn’t most people rather have tactile feedback, than that stupid keyboard cover thing? Wouldn’t they rather have the option of plugging in a wider range of devices?
MS is onto a win-win, because Win8 will sell regardless (due to consumers having no choice of OS), unless you want to pay twice as much for a Macbook Air.