News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Yet company says it is still committed to Surface RT and Windows RT.
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Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
What's shocking is that they didn't see that coming and launched the product anyway.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
They need to do an Atom based X86 one without office for about £200 tablet only and £250 keyboard inclusive. The ARM based ones are pointless for almost everyone.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumias....Apple sold 37 million iPhones.
Still happy Nokia? I wouldn't be. How many smartphones did Samsung sell? About 10 times your figure Nokia....
Microsoft - yup nothing to add other than too little too late and too expensive
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
wasabi
They need to do an Atom based X86 one without office for about £200 tablet only and £250 keyboard inclusive. The ARM based ones are pointless for almost everyone.
Basically a cheap Surface Pro. I totally agree and seriously ask the question who thought and continues to think RT was a worthwhile investment...
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
Scribe
What's shocking is that they didn't see that coming and launched the product anyway.
They didn't realize that the Apple sheep are, in fact, APPLE sheep. Other people are not willing to pay nearly half a grand for a tablet.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
3dcandy
Nokia sold 7.4 million Lumias....Apple sold 37 million iPhones.
Still happy Nokia? I wouldn't be. How many smartphones did Samsung sell? About 10 times your figure Nokia....
I would be! Nokia were doing a bit of a Kodak. They didn't see / weren't able to move to the way the market was heading.
The highly profitable 'moderately smartphone' market they had previously sewn up with Symbian was dying. It used to be a good market but apple showed many consumers were willing to pay a lot of money for something better. Nokia's better never arrived.
They now have a product which reviews are warm too, and consumers report satisfaction with. Compare with HTC who have seen falling massively from 2010 despite their increased focus on android.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
Does someone smell burning, it's like a fire... but with a hint of sale... it's coming this way...
Released with a slow CPU (same as the already mature <£200 Nexus 7) and far too expensive so missed it's window. Had potential to be far more useful than iPad and probably Android given the peripheral compatibility and if the keyboard had been part of the package and the price <= £349 at launch, office on board would have made that a great product and enticed the market.
Now it's completely pointless in the face of cheap Atom powered Win8 x86 tablets which are even more compatible (and faster), cheap Android tablets and the Apple buyers stuck in the icosystem will stick to what they know unless something very, very clearly better comes along.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
valhar2000
They didn't realize that the Apple sheep are, in fact, APPLE sheep. Other people are not willing to pay nearly half a grand for a tablet.
To be fair to Apple you do get some of what you pay for over the competition, they are still updating iOS for old models and they have used some of the fastest SoCs at the time and some good screens. Also iOS is almost idiot proof, frustratingly limited to a tinkering power user... but idiot proof. An iPad is a "safe buy" for the John Lewis crowd... (i.e. cost not the major sale point)
The closest competition has been the Nexus tablets IMHO as they have the same chance of software upgrades and the Nexus 10 is quite comparable to an iPad4, Google/Samsung are just taking a smaller profit. I wouldn't buy an iPad, I don't consider it money well spent, I could almost get an Ultrabook for the price of the higher ones, but I can see why people buy them. iPhone buying I don't understand so much, piddly little midget phones, or Macbooks for that matter, OSX makes me want to delete computers from spacetime... but that's another discussion!
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
Many review sites were asking at the time what/whom RT was for once details of pro was released. OEMs seemed reluctant.
RT should have been a Chromebook in tablet form at 7" and priced no more than 250. Maybe a Nokia one.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
TheAnimus
I would be! Nokia were doing a bit of a Kodak. They didn't see / weren't able to move to the way the market was heading.
The highly profitable 'moderately smartphone' market they had previously sewn up with Symbian was dying. It used to be a good market but apple showed many consumers were willing to pay a lot of money for something better. Nokia's better never arrived.
They now have a product which reviews are warm too, and consumers report satisfaction with. Compare with HTC who have seen falling massively from 2010 despite their increased focus on android.
Really? Shares down again. Reviews good but sales not there. Although WP is now 3rd it's 3rd by a massive margin and several high profile apps have said they have no plans to migrate to WP. I'm still not seeing it here....
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
Does 900 mil write down just mean 900 mil we couldn't gouge out of suckers, rather than any real monetary loss.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
3dcandy
Really? Shares down again. Reviews good but sales not there. Although WP is now 3rd it's 3rd by a massive margin and several high profile apps have said they have no plans to migrate to WP. I'm still not seeing it here....
If only they had you in charge, with your strategic brilliance and leadership, they'd turn around the company to be bigger than Apple in one quarter no doubt!
/s
The turn around may be slower than wanted but just surviving is better than going under.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
Cheers Noli - I'll find a job for you too!
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
Joking aside, you do appear to not get that they have to transition. They being MS. Before everyone just bought a PC, that was how it was, but the iPad proved to be very popular for precisely all the wrong reasons. It was very limited, little Tarquin couldn't download and install new super awesome smiley set by clicking on a banner add.
The thing didn't slow down with time, because Tarquin wasn't installing crap ware endlessly.
It had a stellar battery life.
It's reduced functionality made it simpler for simple things.
These have worried and hit the sales of the PC massively. Not to mention the PC market has matured, more people expect a longer life from their PC hardware. In the same way 5 years ago many people were buying a new phone every year, now fashion aside and iPhone four does everything that most people need from an iPhone five, why change!
MS have come too late to the party, but they are clearly here to stay, they've made what has to be said is a great product (this is been written on one) and ultimately it's far ahead of anything Android or Apple have. Having injured my arm do you know how amazing the voice command accessibility is on it?
Compare it to Google efforts with the nexus ten. It is fairing very well.
The market is clear however they prefer the smaller tablets.
Re: News - Microsoft financials show Surface RT write-down of $900 million
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Originally Posted by
TheAnimus
Joking aside, you do appear to not get that they have to transition. They being MS. Before everyone just bought a PC, that was how it was, but the iPad proved to be very popular for precisely all the wrong reasons. It was very limited, little Tarquin couldn't download and install new super awesome smiley set by clicking on a banner add. The thing didn't slow down with time, because Tarquin wasn't installing crap ware endlessly.
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?
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Originally Posted by
TheAnimus
MS have come too late to the party, but they are clearly here to stay, they've made what has to be said is a great product (this is been written on one) and ultimately it's far ahead of anything Android or Apple have. Having injured my arm do you know how amazing the voice command accessibility is on it?
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.
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.
