It is not doing just fine, because those numbers are revenues, not profits.
Since (as you note) Microsoft don't report Surface profits, you're not really in an informed position to make such aclaim.
Besides which, what does "fine" even mean in this context? Microsoft are committed to the line, and Microsoft have a healthy company wide profit margin, it doesn't even matter much if the Surface makes any profit, its existence is more of a vanity project.
Financial people who do follow this have been skeptical about the profitability of the unit since the beginning...and about how much warranty costs are, which have been very high as the Surface Pro tablets for several generations have been very unreliable.
Because it’s not really true. That is, neither DED’s, or Apple badger. When I go to conferences, I see a mix of Apple laptops, iPads, Windows laptops, and some Surface Pro models. Depending on the conference, the ratios change. But normally, Apple’s products are at least 50%.
Since I'm talking about my own observations, which I reality admit(ted) are anecdotal evidence by definition, I'm not sure how you can say that what I'm saying isn't really true. My observation, when talking about tablet-like things, has been that I see a lot of Surface Pros around where it used to be a sea of only iPads. Depending on the people in the group, mine may be the only iPad in the room, but that's rare. Manager sorts seem to prefer the Surface Pro, while technical folks and students tend to go for the iPad. Again, this is what I have noticed; you can have a completely different experience and we can still both be right
Overall, when you include notebooks, the number of Apple devices that I see seems to be more than half, but I'm not sure if that's just down to Apple stuff being more noticeable. As the glowing Apple logo fades into history, that bias will become less relevant.
If we want to venture out of the anecdotal space, I can tell you that over time the number of Apple devices, as a percentage of the total number of devices) on my workplace WiFi network (I work at a small Canadian university) has declined, though absolute numbers have increased. In 2010-ish, the number of Apple devices was well over 2/3s on any given day and these days it tends to be around 40%. I know this because I was challenged by a former CIO on my assertion that Apple devices made up the majority of devices on our WiFi network, so I wrote a script that tracks that
That decline is not, in my opinion, any indicator of trouble for Apple; it's just a sign that in the mobile space the competition has gotten better. Apple isn't in trouble; the iPad is doing very, very well, but this fixation on pushing the narrative that the Surface Pro is failing seems weird to me.
It is not doing just fine, because those numbers are revenues, not profits.
Since (as you note) Microsoft don't report Surface profits, you're not really in an informed position to make such aclaim.
Besides which, what does "fine" even mean in this context? Microsoft are committed to the line, and Microsoft have a healthy company wide profit margin, it doesn't even matter much if the Surface makes any profit, its existence is more of a vanity project.
Financial people who do follow this have been skeptical about the profitability of the unit since the beginning...and about how much warranty costs are, which have been very high as the Surface Pro tablets for several generations have been very unreliable.
Not really. Every model year has had major problems, many of which Microsoft seems to be ignoring, going by the threads. The new models just came out, so we don’t know much about them yet. While they seemed to get somewhat better for a short while, they began to have problems again a year later. I don’t know how well a Google search page comes out in a link, but here it is. Of course, you can pick out the one link amongst all of the others that agrees with you, but even that l88nk doesn’t cover the newer models, which again have had problems. But the others show just how much of a problem they have been. And this is just the first page of the search.
surface Pro problems
Nope. It won’t link. So just type that into the search page and it will come up.
Because it’s not really true. That is, neither DED’s, or Apple badger. When I go to conferences, I see a mix of Apple laptops, iPads, Windows laptops, and some Surface Pro models. Depending on the conference, the ratios change. But normally, Apple’s products are at least 50%.
Since I'm talking about my own observations, which I reality admit(ted) are anecdotal evidence by definition, I'm not sure how you can say that what I'm saying isn't really true. My observation, when talking about tablet-like things, has been that I see a lot of Surface Pros around where it used to be a sea of only iPads. Depending on the people in the group, mine may be the only iPad in the room, but that's rare. Manager sorts seem to prefer the Surface Pro, while technical folks and students tend to go for the iPad. Again, this is what I have noticed; you can have a completely different experience and we can still both be right
Overall, when you include notebooks, the number of Apple devices that I see seems to be more than half, but I'm not sure if that's just down to Apple stuff being more noticeable. As the glowing Apple logo fades into history, that bias will become less relevant.
If we want to venture out of the anecdotal space, I can tell you that over time the number of Apple devices, as a percentage of the total number of devices) on my workplace WiFi network (I work at a small Canadian university) has declined, though absolute numbers have increased. In 2010-ish, the number of Apple devices was well over 2/3s on any given day and these days it tends to be around 40%. I know this because I was challenged by a former CIO on my assertion that Apple devices made up the majority of devices on our WiFi network, so I wrote a script that tracks that
That decline is not, in my opinion, any indicator of trouble for Apple; it's just a sign that in the mobile space the competition has gotten better. Apple isn't in trouble; the iPad is doing very, very well, but this fixation on pushing the narrative that the Surface Pro is failing seems weird to me.
I’m talking about overall. I’m not saying that your observations are wrong, from what you’ve seen. I’ve also read about how all of these devices pop up in conferences, airports, which I can confirm from my own observations, and from what others tell me. The only places where I’ve seen a majority of Windows laptops and sometimes Surface Pro tablets are at IT conferences.
its a simple matter of numbers. While the dollar amount of sales in the “surface” unit has increased from about $4 billion a year to about $6 billion since 2014, the number of products in the unit has risen considerably. Speciality devices that are very expensive have small, but monetarily significant numbers. The number of yearly Surface pro sales hasn’t budged for years therefor, and remains at an easily calculable 3 million per year, plus or minus a hundred thousand, or so. In modern device sales terms, that’s a very small number. There’s no way around that. Apple is selling a good 40 million iPads a year these days, which while a way below peak, is again rising with the needed bifurcation of the line into less expensive consumer models and pro models. Apple sells a lot more Pro models than Microsoft does. They have somewhat different markets too, so one will show up more in one market than the other.
I think the author hit the nail on the head with this:
“While ostensively patterned after Apple, Microsoft's Surface business looks a lot more like Google's Pixel or Samsung's Galaxy: it's an expensive commodity, not just a premium tier. As such, it isn't resulting in a premium installed base of users, but rather merely selling an expensive version of regular products. “
Microsoft is competing with sub $300 products, using much more expensive options, aside from Surface Go, for 90% of the PC and tablet use cases out there. Those competitors used to be mainly Samsung, Google, and all of the Microsoft Window device manufacturers. In the last 2-3 years, though, Apple ihas been getting a cheaper iPad out there, through Walmart or Best Buy, or Amazon, at a mere $249 (the sale price seems endless). Couple that with the cheap Chromebooks, especially in education, as well of Microsoft’s lack of a smartphone product (its Android phone will get lost in the noise), it is easy to see why Microsoft is not making a lot of head way with Surface.
Comments
Overall, when you include notebooks, the number of Apple devices that I see seems to be more than half, but I'm not sure if that's just down to Apple stuff being more noticeable. As the glowing Apple logo fades into history, that bias will become less relevant.
If we want to venture out of the anecdotal space, I can tell you that over time the number of Apple devices, as a percentage of the total number of devices) on my workplace WiFi network (I work at a small Canadian university) has declined, though absolute numbers have increased. In 2010-ish, the number of Apple devices was well over 2/3s on any given day and these days it tends to be around 40%. I know this because I was challenged by a former CIO on my assertion that Apple devices made up the majority of devices on our WiFi network, so I wrote a script that tracks that
That decline is not, in my opinion, any indicator of trouble for Apple; it's just a sign that in the mobile space the competition has gotten better. Apple isn't in trouble; the iPad is doing very, very well, but this fixation on pushing the narrative that the Surface Pro is failing seems weird to me.
surface Pro problems
I’m talking about overall. I’m not saying that your observations are wrong, from what you’ve seen. I’ve also read about how all of these devices pop up in conferences, airports, which I can confirm from my own observations, and from what others tell me. The only places where I’ve seen a majority of Windows laptops and sometimes Surface Pro tablets are at IT conferences.
its a simple matter of numbers. While the dollar amount of sales in the “surface” unit has increased from about $4 billion a year to about $6 billion since 2014, the number of products in the unit has risen considerably. Speciality devices that are very expensive have small, but monetarily significant numbers. The number of yearly Surface
pro sales hasn’t budged for years therefor, and remains at an easily calculable 3 million per year, plus or minus a hundred thousand, or so. In modern device sales terms, that’s a very small number. There’s no way around that. Apple is selling a good 40 million iPads a year these days, which while a way below peak, is again rising with the needed bifurcation of the line into less expensive consumer models and pro models. Apple sells a lot more Pro models than Microsoft does. They have somewhat different markets too, so one will show up more in one market than the other.