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The business media rumor mill can be put to rest. Microsoft made it official today with the unveiling of its Microsoft Surface Windows 8 tablet. Windows president Steve Sinofsky said today at a media gathering in Los Angeles that the specs include a 10.6-inch widescreen display custom-designed for Surface. “Surface works great for entertainment,” Sinofsky said. Will it be successful and a potent challenger to rival Apple’s iPad? It’s a big shift for Microsoft, which has focused on workplace software — the exception being its successful Xbox gaming console. It’s also previously seen failures selling its own branded hardware, i.e., its Zune music players. 
Regardless, the move would be a page-turner for the company and a clear follow in Apple’s footsteps in controlling both hardware and software for its devices. Microsoft has traditionally let its customers — such as Dell and HP — handle design and marketing of its hardware.
(Steve Ballmer photo: Getty Images)
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Competition is good we all win
A little late to the party… feels like how zune was to the ipod… surface will be to the ipad.
A huge improvement?
uh…no
Finally…the ZunePad is here!
One of the reasons the ipad worked was its targeting of existing (& happy) Apple PC customers. If this thing has a chance it must have clear and seamless integration with the XBox, particularly if MS is launching a new console in the next 12 mos. or has a new Hallo game…good luck but I don’t see this clicking and Balmer’s probably out in a year or two anyway. Microsoft is so 1990′s.
ALL tablets are going to have clear and seamless integration with the Xbox thanks to the Smart Glass program announced at E3.
I personally don’t get the point. I think looking at one screen at a time has worked out pretty well so far.
Agreed. Microsoft is the new Apple and Apple’s ios6 announcement was a disappointment.
Wow. You must be a comedy writer.
The Xbox is not the key to the Surface’s success. The key is if they are able to implement what Apple has done so perfectly, keeping it ridiculously simple and an excellent design.
As much as everyone talks about the iPhone, Android has a WAY bigger market share (albeit on several different hardware configurations). The tablet game is the same IPad might be king overall but the market is far bigger and as long as Microsoft doesn’t trip over itself (which it has done in the past) this thing has potential to carve out a nice place for itself.
Android, compared to iOS, makes no money. Android, since the day it was released, made as much money as iOS did in 9 weeks last fiscal quarter.
not waay bigger, and androids market share dropped last quarter – first time that happened – android is about 50% across all smartphones, apple is at or below 30%.
however Apple has the lions share of app development, and takes four out five dollars spent on smartphones across the entire market. there’s also signs that the chronic fragmentation of android is beginning to fundamentally undo the platform.
After a year only 7% of android devices are on android 4.0
And for what its worth – the fastest growing entrant is windows phone – they went from 1% to 4% recording 530% y on y growth.
Android being the ultimate scale winner in mobile is very, very open to question. google just thought by spraying android everywhere they could repeat Microsoft’s gambit from the nineties. that could prove to be very wrong.
You are wrong when you say Android 4.0 has been out over a year. It came out last Fall and the fact of the matter is many devices are still be upgraded to 4.0 or can’t handle it.Android 3.0 came out over a year ago and was designed only for tablets which is why Gingerbread makes up so much of the Android market
Owning an Android 4.0 phone and tablet I can say iOS doesn’t hold a candle to what Android is capable of, or even Windows Phone for that matter. Apple hasn’t been innovative in their last product releases they are just adding higher resolution screens to everything.Apple is just brilliant at marketing, and they should be considering they spend over $500 million a year on marketing. I look toward to Windows giving Apple a run for its money, especially since Android apps will soon run on Windows allowing the tablet to give users both osoptions.
Oh… so you are the one guy in LA who has bought an Android tablet.
Almost double the market share, *after* a drop, isn’t “way bigger”/ Sure seems like it to me.
Microsoft does not give up, they often fail in the beginning but they learn from their mistakes and it can work later. They tried in the 90s to have a game division, didn’t work that well (“Pffff… microsoft games! you mean Solitaire?”), but now with XBox nobody is laughing anymore.
Same thing with DirectX, the OpenGL people were laughing at them when the first versions of directx were not well received. Now DirectX is the innovator and opengl plays catch up.
They failed with tablets several times before, they failed with iPod clones, but maybe they have learned. All companies fail at many things. This could work.
It’s worth saying that Microsoft has a pretty cool program in OneNote. When I bought Office, I didn’t even know what OneNote was. Now I use it every day, almost constantly, and I’m always clipping things from my browser right to OneNote to deal with later. It works great, and it is designed almost perfectly for a tablet. I’d consider an MS tablet just to have a carry-around OneNote machine.
Likely to be Zune II. Two years ago, it might have worked.
Is it 2010? If not, Microsoft seems awfully late to the party.
I don’t see how Microsoft can come up with such mobile technology and not explain how its Office suite is supposed to evolve? Microsoft is so 90′s but I am sure thats how most businesses do their accounting and record keeping.
Actually I am getting tired already of this tablet technology; can’t wait for the next big thing. Too bad Palsm which was a pioneer in the market is missing out on the competition.
Easy question to answer. If Microsoft can compete with the Mac App ecosystem, they’ve got a shot.
I’m guessing they can’t so…Zune.
Because Windows Phone is doing so well? The only good thing is that’s where that Metro interface belongs: on a tablet NOT a desktop PC.
Apple’s marketing is genius. When they falter, it’s barely noticed and when Microsoft falters, well… it comes across as expected. There’s a cool factor to owning an apple product whereas there’s nothing more uncool than owning something Microsoft has released — and with a stylus no less. They’ve managed to stick it out and make the XBox very successful but for every success story like that, there’s a Zune or a Microsoft MN (wireless router) that they had to abandon because they couldn’t get any traction. Sometimes they’ve even improved on the product compared to their competitors but, at the end of the day, their marketing really really really sucks. I also read that these will probably be released around the same time as Apple’s usual new iPad announcement/release date since Windows 8 isn’t coming to PCs until early-2013. I’m not sure that’s such a good move since fighting against Apple when their PR machine is cranked up seems like an uphill battle.
I don’t know, if they target business they might be able to scoop up that market that Blackberry is losing. It doesn’t really fit with the iPad and I am sure many people would welcome an alternative for business-work.
I think that it will all depend on the unit price. Amazon came out of nowhere with the Fire, and I think if MS prices this nicely, and follows up with a new Xbox next year with crossover games, this could be a nice extension of their business model.
Microsoft’s new Metro GUI is bizarre and too much of a departure from the WIMP model (Window Icon Mouse Pointer).
MS is late to the party and once again has missed the mark with it’s freshman effort.
Let’s see how often it has to be rebooted.
All those rushing to compare it to the Zune so quickly are, at best, extremely short-sighted and lazy in their thinking.
This pretty much hits every complaint people have about the iPad. If the cost is comperable, or lower (and when comparing to Apple, that isn’t tough) it’s got a really good shot of catching on.
If you think the iPad will be the top dog in tablets forever – you really havn’t been paying attention to the electronics market… well, forever.