The Surface RT can be considered a failure on all accounts, Microsoft has lost around $900 million and even with the recent sellout after a price drop, they are still down by hundreds of millions on the project.
We have no idea how well the Surface Pro has done, but from recent stock intake and other sources it has not been great. However, the Surface Pro was not meant to be the big seller, it was an expensive hybrid and we doubt Microsoft invested heavily on the Pro unit.
The Surface RT has sold around 1.5 million units all around the world, this may seem like a great sum but Microsoft was banking on 3 million and 9 million at the release of the next Surface. This has not been met, not by any stretch of the imagination. The huge Times Square launch was for nothing, when the Surface RT had an odd user interface and questionable performance.
The main problem with Surface RT is Windows RT running on it. Instead of a full Windows 8 OS, RT is the Start menu and then the desktop with five Microsoft Office apps. The Surface didn’t make sense and consumers found it weird compared to the iPad or any cheap Android tablet.
The Surface 2 may be a lot better though, coming from past mistakes, Nvidia is once again bringing the Tegra chip to the Microsoft tablet. We are likely to see two versions of Surface this time, a seven and ten inch model.
The seven-inch model will be cheap and priced against Android tablets, like the Nexus 7 and Kindle Fire HD. The 10-inch model will be priced against the iPad and we believe Windows RT will come with just the start menu and Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps.
