Microsoft has already released three generations of the Surface Pro and two of the original Surface, according to insider knowledge, the company has been working on the Surface Mini and larger ARM-based tablets, to build out the range.
However, replacing Steve Ballmer with Satya Nadella as CEO might have changed the internal view of Surface. Nadella has said this is a “core business”, but this line does not stand for much, given the recent 18,000 employees purge, mostly in Nokia.
The Surface, when looked at on paper, has been one of Microsoft’s most lacklustre products. On the whole, Microsoft has lost $1.7 billion on the Surface project and $900 million on the original Surface tablet alone, one of Steve Ballmer’s largest failures.
This type of loss can only be changed by vastly shortening the resources and production of the Surface, to the point where Microsoft can actively pursue development of one-tablet and make sure it looks great, but is only produced for a few thousand customers.
That would mean Microsoft never has a chance of surpassing the iPad in terms of sales, but it would take a miracle for this to happen anyway, considering the bad press on both Windows 8 and the Surface tablet, both leading to lower customer interest.
Microsoft has been known to keep hardware lines going in the past. The Xbox has been a big burden on Microsoft’s financials and even with the Xbox One doing well on the digital end, it might not be enough for Microsoft to continue funding a large team.
Surface has a bad name to it, similar to Zune. Microsoft got into the market late, and once they entered no customer was interested in the device, at least not enough customers to actually turn a profit.
This has lead to a reserved look on the Surface under Nadella’s leadership, but will he continue to allow hardware development, or vastly limit the amount of resources the team has to work with – cancelling the product if he has to?
