Surface left on shelves as world+dog slurps up small slates
Knife brought to gunfight, etc, etc
Half a million Microsoft Surface tablets may be gathering dust on shop shelves, it has been claimed.
Market watcher IHS iSuppli reckons Microsoft shipped 1.25 million Surface tablets into the resale channel during Q4 2012. However, only 55 to 60 per cent of those Windows RT-based devices were purchased by punters.
That means there were 500,000 to 562,500 Surface tablets awaiting sale to consumers at the end of the quarter.
Separately, IDC, another market watcher, said it calculates some 52.5 million tablets shipped from vendors during Q4. That would leave Microsoft with a market share of no more than 2.4 per cent, if the IDC and iSuppli estimates are correct.
They can't both be right, though. IDC reckons Microsoft shipped just 900,000 Surfaces into the IT distribution channel, 28 per cent fewer than iSuppli suggested Redmond had released. IDC’s estimate puts Microsoft’s market share at 1.7 per cent, just behind Barnes & Noble’s 1.9 per cent.
“Reaction to the company's Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best,” was how IDC’s Ryan Reith put it. Redmond’s mistake: releasing a large-size tablet just as world+dog were realising they want smaller ones.
IDC puts Apple’s share at 43.6 per cent, ahead of Samsung (15.1 per cent), Amazon (11.5 per cent), Asus (5.8 per cent) and B&N.
Asus's share was lifted by shipments of Google’s Nexus 7 tables, which it manufactures and which were heavily promoted by the internet advertising giant in the run-up to Christmas. Look at the year-on-year change: 600,000 Asus tablets shipped in Q4 2011, leaping to 3.1 million units in Q4 2012.
Only Samsung came close to that 402.5 per cent growth - the Korean company’s shipments jumped 263 per cent year on year, rising from 2.2 million to 7.9 million. Apple’s shipments grew a more modest 48.1 per cent, rising from 15.1 million units to 22.9 million. Amazon’s shipments rose less impressively, going from 4.7 million to 6.0 million, an increase of 26.8 per cent.
B&N was the only top-five player showing a decline: shipments slipped 27.7 per cent year on year, falling from 1.4 million units in Q4 2011 to 1.0 million in Q4 2012, though its market share jumped sequentially, from 0.7 per cent in Q3 2012.
Amazon’s share rose sequentially too, from 8.3 per cent, but Apple’s was down (from 46.4 per cent) as was that of Asus (from 7.8 per cent), and Samsung saw no change quarter on quarter. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Windows 8
Lack of apps.
The reason they shoehorned the TIFKAM into desktops is that they hope to attract more developers for it. The developers would not bother for their current market share on mobile, and the market share will not improve unless developers write apps. It's a chicken and egg problem, and they are trying to solve it by having their cash cow lay the egg. Er… Yes.
Windows 8
If microsoft had just made a dedicated OS for tablets, and a dedicated OS for desktops instead of trying to mash everything into one, then there is no doubt in my mind that both would have been superior and resulted in higher sales numbers for both Surface Tablets, and Windows 8(the desktop version)
Maybe Microsoft will start to realise this now too with the poor sales of Surface and lack of adoption of Windows 8.
Everyone going 7" seems a mistake to me.
No, those not seeing the potential in the 7" market are the ones making the mistake. That would be Microsoft, then.
The other 500,000
where all used in those pointless adverts that tell you absolutely nothing about the product.
I think the biggest problem RT has is that it is the word Windows in front of it. People think it is a laptop with a detachable keyboard and then the reality hits them.
