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Microsoft pulls in $1.35B in revenue for Surface line
- MaysonL 11y agoImpressive indeed! Over 19% of Apple's iPad revenue.
- hyperliner 11y agoIt's more comparable to at least a MacBook Air laptop.
- poopsintub 11y agoThey spec'd the Surface Book to match up with a MacBook Pro, but I honestly don't think the quality is there.
- coldtea 11y agoSo managing to sell 20% of a competitors revenue, in a category where you were present 5+ years before said competitor, and after 5 years after the competitor redefined the category and created a huge multi-billion market for it (which it never had before) that they totally dominated, is impressive?
- gelasio 11y agoNaw, you're not a fanboi. You just had to come and shit all over Microsoft and make the same point that you already made up thread because uhhh, you call it like you see it...right? Bullshit. More like you can't deal with opinions that don't match your own, especially when it comes to Microsoft and Apple. You're nothing more than an pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft fanboi.
- ArnoldP 11y agoThey certainly did something right, though I'm not quite sure what it was. A few years back, you couldn't step in front of an undergrad class here (Canada) without being subject to a wall of glowing bitten apples staring at you, now at least a quarter I'd estimate are those surface tablets. Who knew people would take a chance on laptop that doesn't work when on your lap.
- ghrifter 11y agoThe branding of the surface has been pretty successful with the removable keyboard and especially the pen. The pen makes it really easy to take notes on lecture slides so you do not have to have mess/organize/maintain physical paper.
- jbigelow76 11y agoI've found the pen to be the one part of my Surface that I don't use all, maybe it's because I am left handed and it leaves OneNote registering a ton of false navigation gestures but it's basically unusable for me. Overall, I still like my Surface (non Pro) but it's mostly for web browsing and media consumption.
- WorldMaker 11y agoI've heard [1] that you can go into Device settings for the pen/handwriting-recognition and set it to left handed and it will get better at ignoring the touches from your hand to the left of the pen. [1] Not left handed myself.
- soylentcola 11y agoJust verified this on the 1st gen Surface Pro I've got here at work. Hit the Win key, type "pen", open "pen settings" and the three basic options are "choose which hand you write with", "show visual effects", and "show cursor". I'm not left handed so I can't comment on efficacy but the option is indeed there.
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- theklub 11y agoI got a surface book for work, its pretty sweet.
- eachro 11y agoBut how much profit did that generate? I don't see any mention of profit in the article.
- us0r 11y agoSince when does anyone on HN care about actual profits?
- samfisher83 11y agoThey kind of did the same thing with the xbox. Sunk a ton of money into. Instead of just pure revenue growth it is important to look at margins. The overall profitability of the product.
- sjm-lbm 11y agoThis is impressive in general, but particularly so in light of where they came from: http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-900-million-surface-rt-write-down-how-did-this-happen/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsofts-900-million-surface-...
- cm2012 11y agoIf I ever get a tablet, it will be a surface. Simply because so much of the work I do resides in spreadsheets, and Surface is optimized for excel and productivity.
- fsloth 11y agoIMO, tablets are consuming devices. And as a tablet, my Surface Pro 4 is not very good - it is a bit too heavy and has a too short battery life. As a portable laptop with a pen and screen with an excellent sRGB colorspace support - and with a nice keyboard - it's awesome.
- mythz 11y agoiPad: 7.1B - doomed category Surface Pro/Books: 1.35B - super impressive, categories of the future!
- vilmosi 11y agoIsn't this what people said about the original iPhone?
- poopsintub 11y agoIt's a bit subjective since one company had huge market share out of the gate and invented the category, while the other keeps releasing 'new' products, years later. So yes, there's growth for now. For Wall Street, growth is pretty much key.
- vilmosi 11y agoWhy is it that when MS makes a "new" product and category, you put it in quotations, yet when Apple does it, you don't? Your approach to these companies is hypocritical at best. At least MS is trying to invent a new category these days. >>> had huge market share out of the gate That's just wrong.
- coldtea 11y ago>Why is it that when MS makes a "new" product and category, you put it in quotations, yet when Apple does it, you don't? Because one dominates and defines the market, as can be seen by any before and after, and the other is just putting out some products few people care about.
- ntakasaki 11y agoSo is the iPad Pro a "new" product or a new product?
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- gill984 11y agoMy sister has an SP3 and likes it a lot. She's a student in college and I feel like this is a good niche for the hardware. The main draw to the Surface for her was the pen because of how well it worked compared to other options. She downloads pdf or ppt presentations and can annotate and take notes in class. Is there any other hardware that can do this just as well? I think maybe the ipad pro but I have never used one.
- jallmann 11y agoMy sister does the exact same thing with the Lenovo Thinkpad Yoga. She bought a separate stylus for it, but the combination has worked well for her.
- frik 11y ago"Microsoft and Nokia have sold a total of 110 million Windows Phones compared to 4.5 billion iOS and Android phones in the same period. IDC recently reported that 400 million phones were sold in the recent quarter, meaning just 1.1 percent of them were Lumia Windows Phones. Microsoft does not have any compelling Lumia handsets, and the Lumia 950 and Lumia 950 XL were both disappointing flagship devices with unfinished Windows 10 Mobile software." https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10993847
- arrty88 11y agoI used a surface pro 3 for a couple weeks before ultimately returning it. Windows as a dev platform couldn't cut it for me, and the ubuntu VM in Virtualbox did not survive multiple sleep cycles one puts the surface through during normal use. The thing i did love about the surface is that the processor is not sitting on my lap, where as the macbook air/pro burns my legs all day long. I would love for apple to make a version of the macbook that puts the processor behind the screen.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agohey I’m not trying to troll you or anything, sincere question: Exactly how do you work? On a sofa? Airplanes? (irony zone, shortly after posting this, I realized that I’m typing from a lounge chair with my laptop squarely on my legs… but this is an unusual circumstance for me)
- jonnycowboy 11y agoI think this is impressive but it will see even larger growth when businesses start adopting them in lieu of the standard Dell laptops.
- wstrange 11y agoMy wife switched to a SP3 from a macbook, because it looked like a very compelling device. It lost all bluetooth and wifi - 4 months out of warranty (hardware issue). From googling - this was not a completely uncommon occurrence. Yes - we should have gotten the extended warranty, but this was an expensive device, and we expected quality hardware that would last. From a usability perspective, it is a device that is in-between. It is not a stellar tablet nor a stellar laptop.
- fumar 11y agoI believe most SP3's should still have hardware warranty, I purchased mine at a few months out of launch and still has it. I would ping customer support or take it a Microsoft Store.
- Seventhson74 11y agoFunny, my wife and I had a 2014 Macbook Pro with retina display and the backlight on the screen went out. We also have a SurfacePro 3 and have had no issues whatsoever. We brought the Macbook to the apple-store (with extended warranty) and they initially tried to tell me that screens were not covered (as they are almost always broken due to accidental damage). I had to come back with a flashlight and show them that you can still see the image, it's just the back light went out and you cant really break just the back light. I was really starting to move away from Apple anyway but this really sealed the deal for me. However, I know that my experience is anecdotal, and it's plural is not data so take my experience for what it's worth.....
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- ChuckMcM 11y agoI wasn't really surprised by this, I've got a Surface Book (ordered after the announcement) and so far have been very pleased with the hardware, and hoping the software can catch up. For me, to replace a paper book and paper notebook you have to have a great reading experience and a great drawing experience. For me, the Surface Pro 4 has both of those. That said, I'll probably end up getting the tablet version to augment the Surface Book unless they can fix detach. Way too often I try to detach and it won't because something is unable to release, and when I'm in "clipboard" mode there are no ports on the clipboard. I can get around that partially by using the dock which has ports but I'd really like a USB-C port and a micro-SD card slot on the display half.
- nextos 11y agoIt's really excellent harware. But sadly it's not very usable in Linux yet [1]. I'd love to use a fanless Surface with a tiling window manager as my daily driver. But it comes nowhere close to my MBA 2012 (used by Linus for sometime) in terms of Linux compatibility. Almost perfect with a stock kernel except for really minor problems (no battery ACPI ticks when it discharges). [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/surfacelinux https://www.reddit.com/r/surfacelinux
- ChuckMcM 11y agoLinux support is, as you say, non-existent. That might be better with the new Dell Skylake laptops. That said, I've never found a pen-aware Linux sketching program that had any utility and I don't have the time to write one.
- pwnna 11y agoSketching or note taking? Xournal is a pretty good note taking software and I've been using it for several years at this point.
- nextos 11y agoYep, xournal was the one I had in mind. For the remaining stuff I'm completely keyboard-driven. Yet I prefer Surfaces to regular laptops. This is for ergonomic reasons. I find it easy to place them split from the keyboard, which makes a great mini desktop. Also I can hold them as a tablet if I'm reading or surfing casually.
- ommunist 11y agoeven if they'll give Surfaces for free, and pay people to use it, I am afraid, more and more people will use Android and iOS. It is simply too late for MS to "own the desktop". IN december I 've seen first time in my GA account that hits from Android users prevailed over MS OS, iOS being on the 3rd place. UPD: since its mostly dull corporate websites, I think I am correct.
- coldtea 11y ago>Microsoft pulls in an impressive $1.35B in revenue for Surface line Really? Impressive for whom? 1.3B is less than what Apple made with the iWatch -- and that's after decades of MS losing money and trying to go somewhere with their table OS and then tablet offerings.
- calciphus 11y agoWait, where did you get Apple Watch numbers? Apple hasn't released those.
- coldtea 11y ago"Though Apple won't share specific sales figures for its new Apple Watch, disclosures made by the company this week reveal that the wearable device reached more than $1.69 billion in sales by the end of September" http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/29/apple-watch-sales-topped-17-billion-in-five-months http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/10/29/apple-watch-sales-...
- amlgsmsn 11y agoSo that's 6 months of sales versus 3 months for the Surface, so not directly comparable.
- gelasio 11y agocoldtea is a known pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft shill who has no problem lying in an attempt to make Apple look good and make Microsoft look bad. Anyone who acted like this person in an anti-Apple way would have been kicked off of this forum already.
- coldtea 11y ago>coldtea is a known pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft shill who has no problem lying in an attempt to make Apple look good and make Microsoft look bad. Sorry, but what is this kind of Reddit-level BS? First, "shill" means a paid lackey. I don't think you know me, and I sure don't know you. So that's not just rude, it's insulting. Even more so "has no problem lying". Also "known pro-Apple, anti-Microsoft"? What are you, 16 years old? If you have issues with Apple take it with the company, not people you don't know in forums. I'm 40ish, not some corporate fanboi in their parents' basement -- which yur kind of arguments seem to be meant for. I've used and am using both Apple and MS products. And Linux and FreeBSD. In fact I've cut my teeth on SunOS, back before there was OS X and Gnome. So, I could not give LESS fucks about Apple or Microsoft. I just tell it like I see it. Microsoft has been trying with their tablet for decades, and I know because I was in the IT sector all those decades. And it was always subpart, in a crude PC with a detachable monitor way. So, after nearly 2 decades of them trying, I wouldn't call making 1.3 billion revenue in 3 months with the latest Surface "impressive". Especially since Apple just made 40% more with a new product category, and with a first-generation product in only 6 months -- as opposed to after 16 years of trying to make it with the same product category (and losing money all the while on it). How is 1.3 billion in 3 months for Surface impressive, when its competitor, considered "declining" still managed to do 4-5 times the number in its last quarter?
- orbitingpluto 11y agoOne thing I want to know from Surface Book owners is whether the keyboard can be configured for smoother productivity. Naviagational (Home/PgUp/PgDown/End) and volume keys are on by default meaning that you have to press the Fn-Alt-Function Key if you want to use Alt-Function. The problem with that is that an independent Fn press will lock out the function key, toggling the behaviour so that Function Keys are now the default. I would like it if LAlt-FunctionKey was different behaviour from RAlt-FunctionKey. LAlt-F4 would close a program while RAlt-Function Key would change the volume. The requirement to use the Fn Key and the fact that the Fn can be locked (and easily and accidentally unlocked/locked again) is a serious usability issue. Actually I'd prefer a full real keyboard... nevertheless the Surface Book and the SP4 keyboards are massive improvements. Moreover, does anyone know if the undocking button next to the Delete key can be locked out, say, requiring a key combination instead?
- makecheck 11y agoA general accounting question...do all companies count revenue the same way for scenarios like: - Product is purchased by store. - Customer actually buys product. - Customer returns product. - Unsold product is returned by store. In other words, I don't know how to compare this to anything else because I don't know if it's counting units that didn't reach real customers, or if the announcement would be a lot different two weeks from now after some people return their Christmas presents?
- bitmapbrother 11y ago>Microsoft pulls in an impressive $1.35B in revenue for Surface line Why don't they publish the profit they made on their Surface line of products? This is a lot like the revenue they reported for Azure. Until we know what they actually made these numbers are of very little value.