News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million

[TheAnimus]

Erm, did you manage to miss out on those news stories where little "Tarquin" managed to rack up a load of expensive in-app purchases instead of downloading said crapware?

Straw poll, how many people do you know who have managed to run up such debts with in-app purchases? Vs how many have messed up a perfectly good installation with crapware.

Far ahead of Android? Other than having "real" MS Office (and Doc2Go et al seem to do a good enough job for me) I honestly can't see what the big deal is with RT. It's not as if it can make the tea, solve world hunger or anything special. And I'll still argue that - for me at least - splashing the same money on an Android-based Transformer is a better bet. It's still got the SD slot, USB connectivity that RT has while also having a better screen and a LOT wider app support.

Seriously? Doc2Go? Are you ****ting me? It can't do anything. Take a PDF switch some details and re-submit in Doc2Go? Oh no you can't do that, what about a quick entry to an excel spreadsheet called "new startup costs" oh you can't do that..... It can almost, but not quite view a PDF.... Yuppie!

It's useless.

Then you appeared to completely ignore my last post about accessibility. No other tablet on the market can do that. Not one of them.

I'd take a LOT of convincing that, irrespective of how good the RT tablet was, it was a worthy product. MS screwed up by not launching "at cost" in the hope/expectation of getting some users in there and hence generating some interest in apps. Pricing it at the level of iPad's and Android tablets was a dumb move when there's (still!) not the app support to make it anything other than a curiosity. Heck, I had someone comment to me last week that this is true - to an extent - of even full Windows 8 - there's still not as many MUI apps as would be useful.

I agree, the price point was too high. They should have doubled down and launched incredibly aggressively. Allowing 7" devices would have helped too.

[Spud1]

Then you appeared to completely ignore my last post about accessibility. No other tablet on the market can do that. Not one of them.

You didn't make it clear in your last post - whats the accessibility/voice control feature that RT has which iOS doesn't? I have found the support in iOS6 really good, you can operate the tablet and standard apps without touching the screen at all (only need to enable voice or push to talk if needed).

Office wise Docs2Go is an awful solution but there are plenty of genuine office apps that do the job (and MS office on iOS now too)..we have had that discussion in the other thread though

I know MS have to transition, and the market may do at some point, but these numbers show even more clearly how Windows Phone + RT are just not capturing the marketplace, however good the products may be neither platform can really be called a market success.

[The Hand]

On Amazon.co.uk, I saw the Nokia Lumia 520 was or still is, the 3rd best selling phone recently, behind the Galaxy S3 and beating the S4, so things could be happening with the Nokia/WP platform.