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There were plenty of things that doomed Surface RT's initial rollout to failure. It may have done well with focus groups, and I'm not convinced that it was an
by kvb 13y ago
There were plenty of things that doomed Surface RT's initial rollout to failure. It may have done well with focus groups, and I'm not convinced that it was an objectively poor product to the extent that it was guaranteed to fail. But right off the bat they had poor marketing combined with poor distribution (Surfaces were only available online or in Microsoft stores, of which there aren't very many, so very few people could try before buying). Even once they started allowing Surfaces to be sold through other physical retailers, they did a poor job training salespeople and getting attractive placement in stores. And the RT is also just a hard product to sell - there are lots of aspects that are really nice, but it's lacking a simple elevator pitch.
- purplelobster 13y agoI'll add to that. I tried very hard to buy a Surface Pro from their online store. It was literally impossible. They did not allow me to give them money, no matter how much I tried. They had separate systems for everything (the online store, the physical store had different systems and databases), needed a live login to make a purchase (why?!), didn't accept any of my cards with the helpful error message "error: 0". When on the phone with them it took over an hour to order it. I had to be a very persistent customer in order to finally get one. So far I'm very satisfied with it, the Wacom pen and it being a laptop/tablet replacement are the killer features for me. But after dealing with their online store and phone support, and add to that their image problems with the public, and I'm not surprised it's not selling well.