Microsoft's New Surface Tablets Are Close To Selling Out

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According to Microsoft, the company's new Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablets are close to selling out. I can totally see people wanting the Surface Pro 2 but who is buying the RT versions?

The first official claim of the low stocks came on Friday as the Microsoft Developer Twitter account told followers, presumably including lots of developers, that “Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 are close to selling out. All those buyers are gonna need apps. Your move: http://developer.microsoft.com”. Evidence of Redmond pushing for the creation of more apps, to further the Windows cause.
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Who is buying the RT versions? People like me. I have a Dell XPS 10, but it has some performance issues. It's slow to respond to screen touches. The new Surface 2 RT is much faster, in both processor and storage. Dell went cheap on both. However, I like the interface. So, I keep using it. I'd like to get a Surface RT 2, but I'm kind of short on cash right now after buying a second GTX 680.
 
Close to selling out, I believe this. They probably only ran a few thousand units ;)
 
I dont get all the hate for RT. For the price its pretty damn nice, sure its crap compared to the pro but keep price in mind and its obvious why RT is selling.
 
They said this last time too, and ended with writing down a billion dollars for the stockpiles they had in inventory.
 
Surface Pro is awesome. I wish they'd come up with a way to distance Surface from Surface Pro. It needs a new moniker.
 
Disposed said:
I dont get all the hate for RT. For the price its pretty damn nice, sure its crap compared to the pro but keep price in mind and its obvious why RT is selling.
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Because compared to other ARM tablets (iPad and Android), it's not a great value at the end of the day.

RT applications don't work on Windows Phone and WP apps don't work on RT, like iOS and Android do... nor is the ecosystem anywhere near as large as iOS and Android. Developers just don't seem nearly as interested in RT and they are other ARM OS's. Not just software, but hardware accessories too.

On top of all that, MS has absolutely no problem throwing a product away and screwing customers over in the process if sales aren't what they want. In that event, you'll end up like early adopters of the BB Playbooks. Next to no 3rd party software support and no 1st party support.
 
Selling out? What a load of crap-filled lies. Microsoft will do anything and say anything to try and gain relevance in the tablet markets. Sorry Microsoft, you're late to the party and not even fashionably late. The only people wasting their time on you are executives who want to try and be trendy by not using an iPad or Android-alternative. Your devices can't even give presentations without locking up though I've yet to see that from anything else.
 
shade91 said:
Selling out? What a load of crap-filled lies. Microsoft will do anything and say anything to try and gain relevance in the tablet markets. Sorry Microsoft, you're late to the party and not even fashionably late. The only people wasting their time on you are executives who want to try and be trendy by not using an iPad or Android-alternative. Your devices can't even give presentations without locking up though I've yet to see that from anything else.
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I don't think they are late, persay. They've had "tablets" before tablets was a thing. It's just their design and execution that has been a problem.
 
The Surface Pro is a wonderful device but it's overpriced. There is a reason that Apple didn't just bolt touch controls onto the MacOS and put that on an iPad. Microsoft apparently didn't grasp that a touch OS needs to be touch only. People don't want to drag their greasy fingers across their desktop screens.
 
shade91 said:
Selling out? What a load of crap-filled lies. Microsoft will do anything and say anything to try and gain relevance in the tablet markets. Sorry Microsoft, you're late to the party and not even fashionably late. The only people wasting their time on you are executives who want to try and be trendy by not using an iPad or Android-alternative. Your devices can't even give presentations without locking up though I've yet to see that from anything else.
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Id prefer a Surface over a Ipad anyday. Without question. I also own multiple mac devices. so you cant claim im some sort of fan boy.
 
I would jump all over the Surface 2 RT in a heartbeat if it had digitizer pen support and better app selections. The weight and size is fantastic. But until then, I'm sticking with my Surface Pro.

I tend to skip genertions - iPhone 3Gs to iPhone 4s to iPhone 5s. So I'll be keeping my Surface Pro until Surface Pro 3 comes out. :-D
 
Dwango said:
The Surface Pro is a wonderful device but it's overpriced. There is a reason that Apple didn't just bolt touch controls onto the MacOS and put that on an iPad. Microsoft apparently didn't grasp that a touch OS needs to be touch only. People don't want to drag their greasy fingers across their desktop screens.
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Overpriced? How much would you like it to cost? $1?
 
pliskin679 said:
Id prefer a Surface over a Ipad anyday. Without question. I also own multiple mac devices. so you cant claim im some sort of fan boy.
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A surface pro and I'm with you. For an RT device though, I just don't understand the appeal unless you're only using it to surf the web and edit office documents. You just have so many more options with an iPad or Android Tablet for software alone.
 
I own an RT and have a Surface 2 Pro on pre-order. Honestly if they included a digitizer on the RT and MS threw some resources at developing some apps on the RT platform it would be a killer device. Why bundle OneNote and not include digitizer support? It blows my mind how dumb the people in charge are.
 
dagamer34 said:
Overpriced? How much would you like it to cost? $1?
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I tend to agree with him though. It's just a touchscreen laptop sans keyboard. No reason why they can't price it accordingly at around $600-$800, not $899-$1199. At least include the keyboard and not make it cost $100-$120 extra.

But Microsoft isn't the only one doing this (in the Pro class). Lenovo's Core tablets cost more. So does Sony's.
 
Azhar said:
I tend to agree with him though. It's just a touchscreen laptop sans keyboard. No reason why they can't price it accordingly at around $600-$800, not $899-$1199. At least include the keyboard and not make it cost $100-$120 extra.

But Microsoft isn't the only one doing this (in the Pro class). Lenovo's Core tablets cost more. So does Sony's.
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But it isn't just a laptop, it's an ultrabook. Extra cost for Intel Ultra mobile processors, extra money for SSD instead of HDD. That is the laptop vs Ultra-book part.

Then you get extra money to have touchscreen input, and extra money for a IPS screen instead of TN screens on most notebooks.

Those things all cost money.

If you wanted a tablet with a crappy TN screen, HDD, standard CPU, then it would be closer to normal laptop prices. But it would really suck.
 
Azhar said:
I tend to agree with him though. It's just a touchscreen laptop sans keyboard. No reason why they can't price it accordingly at around $600-$800, not $899-$1199. At least include the keyboard and not make it cost $100-$120 extra.

But Microsoft isn't the only one doing this (in the Pro class). Lenovo's Core tablets cost more. So does Sony's.
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And to add what Snowdog said, the chassis is solid magnesium with a screen covered in Gorilla Glass with a Wacom digitizer. There's nothing on the market built this well that costs $600 to $800. Unfortunately for PCs, there's so much cheap plastic junk out there that when many see higher prices they automatically think overpriced rather than possibly better constructed.
 
CorruptedOne said:
Didn't we hear this before....before the $1billion loss?
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They said it about the Surface Pro. They took the write-down on the Surface RT only.

From what I hear, sales were actually ok, they just made WAY too many of the damn things.
 
Surface RT isn't that bad.

From what I seen switching .NET Apps to support RT isn't that hard either. So if you run it on surface pro, then recompiling to RT wouldn 't be that bad. But no one seems to bother doing it.

Either way, Microsoft really needs to cut this !@#$@# out and just switch over WP to be compatible with RT. It's creating confusion and pushing away customers who don't want to have disjointed OSs from phone to tablet.
 
Unknown-One said:
From what I hear, sales were actually ok, they just made WAY too many of the damn things.
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The write down was a result if having to discount the value of the Surface RT, which if it hadn't been so big there would have been no need for the write. Microsoft didn't lose a billion dollars last quarter in the Surface RT, they just won't make a billion they could have had they been able to sell the inventory at full MSRP.

The Pro for what it was sold well it seems. I'm sure they scaling back tremendously the number of Surface 2's they stock pile and a doing a much more demand driven manufacturing process. They won't make a ton of money but they won't loose any or have to write anything down this time either I bet.
 
Personally I dont like the surface pro at all, but id take one over an Ipad. what would i do with an ipad besides play angry birds? at least the surface pro can run real software like adobe lightroom and world of warcraft (what else is there? :-P )
 
pliskin679 said:
Id prefer a Surface over a Ipad anyday. Without question. I also own multiple mac devices. so you cant claim im some sort of fan boy.
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How much time have you spent with both iPads and Surfaces?

DigitalGriffin said:
Surface RT isn't that bad.
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No, it isn't that bad. There are a lot of products that "aren't that bad", just as there are a lot of products that are simply better than the products with which they compete.

There are certain cases where an RT is the correct choice, but they are few and far between in my opinion.
 
Apple iPads are now low-end devices. The first laptops were very expensive and over time the price has fallen. Expect the same from Intel powered tablets. All the people who were waiting for Haswell tablets are buying now.

While Apple gets more and more stylish (feminine) Intel powered Windows 8 tablets will get more and more powerful and cheaper and cheaper. Which one do "you" want?
 
iPads are getting more powerful faster than Windows 8 tablets are. Your observation is quite odd.
 
Unknown-One said:
The Toms Hardware link leads to a "page not found" error for me...

The other one specifies the 32GB variant. Also, it's not hard to believe that they produced the MASSIVE over-stock after they had sold-out once.
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Just pointing out, that "Selling out" means nothing. Toms link works even if I fire up an alternate browser, so the problem is likely on your end.

Google it, there are hundreds of links saying the same thing. Microsoft was issuing new PR almost daily after the Surface RT came out, indicating various stages on just how completely it was "sold out":

Microsoft Surface RT entirely sold out in the United States

Only numbers sold to customers really matters. Not "sold out" of some unknown number. That is completely meaningless hype. Last year is the perfect example of how meaningless.
 
wonderfield said:
iPads are getting more powerful faster than Windows 8 tablets are. Your observation is quite odd.
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This observation is also odd considering that there's only been on generation of iPad hardware out since the first Windows 8 tablets so iPad hardware hasn't improved at all. And it really doesn't make any since to compare an A6 or A7 to an i5/i7 series mobile processor considering the huge performance disparity overall.

At the x86 baseline, Bay Trail should provide as much of an overall performance improvement as A7 based relative to Clover Trail. There will no doubt be many benchmarks on the subject with the devices are released.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
Is the A6X faster than the latest i5 in the S2Pro? Genuine question, I haven't read comparisons.
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No. Historically speaking, however, the iPad's performance has generally doubled in both CPU and GPU performance compared to the previous generation. On the Intel side of things, we've seen only seen minor improvements in CPU IPC, but good improvements in GPU performance (and on a potentially accelerating trend).
 
wonderfield said:
No. Historically speaking, however, the iPad's performance has generally doubled in both CPU and GPU performance compared to the previous generation. On the Intel side of things, we've seen only seen minor improvements in CPU IPC, but good improvements in GPU performance (and on a potentially accelerating trend).
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Gotcha. It seems they have made major strides in their battery life, as well.
 
Snowdog said:
But it isn't just a laptop, it's an ultrabook. Extra cost for Intel Ultra mobile processors, extra money for SSD instead of HDD. That is the laptop vs Ultra-book part.

Then you get extra money to have touchscreen input, and extra money for a IPS screen instead of TN screens on most notebooks.

Those things all cost money.

If you wanted a tablet with a crappy TN screen, HDD, standard CPU, then it would be closer to normal laptop prices. But it would really suck.
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heatlesssun said:
And to add what Snowdog said, the chassis is solid magnesium with a screen covered in Gorilla Glass with a Wacom digitizer. There's nothing on the market built this well that costs $600 to $800. Unfortunately for PCs, there's so much cheap plastic junk out there that when many see higher prices they automatically think overpriced rather than possibly better constructed.
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Yes that's true - I own a Surface Pro 128GB myself. We have a bunch of Lenovo Thinkpad Tablet 2 that's solid and only 500 grams and has a digitizer screen - but it runs on an Intel Atom - for $750. That's a lot for an Atom tablet I think - but as you guys said, the digitizer screen is probably the cause of the high cost.

Hopefully demand for such screens will go up so they can lower the price, but seeing how SSD hasn't dropped significantly for some time, I don't see the price coming down anytime soon.
 
Since this comes directly from a Microsoft developer's twitter account I have to call bullshit on this one. No hard numbers just hyperbole. Of course they could have produced so few this time around it could be true.
 
Greggy_D said:
Bam. Exactly.
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But who's to say that they didn't sell out initially and then they turned around and made more, but made to many?
Hell the same thing could happen to any company. Have initial orders be strong then it falls flat after making more thinking demand was strong.
 
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