Microsoft has never been able to get its Surface to muster much excitement, even as tablets from its competitors seemed to be taking over the world. Now its back with a new version of the Surface, and the challenge seems doubly difficult given that people seem to be losing their general enthusiasm for tablets.
Before Tuesday's product launch, Microsoft was rumored to be working on both a smaller and a larger version of the Surface. Smaller tablets have become increasingly popular and now make up over half of tablet sales, according to IDC. But Microsoft decided instead to go after the big, untaped part of the tablet market. The Surface Pro 3, introduced at an event in New York, has a 12-inch screen that invites comparisons to smaller laptops (like Apple's 11-inch MacBook) rather than rival tablets (like Apple's iPad). Oversized tablets make up just over one percent of the market to date.
Microsoft representatives at Tuesday's event implicitly criticized the iPad, which remains the most popular tablet on the market, as a device that was good only for consuming content rather than doing real work. "Ninety-five percent of people who have a iPad also have a laptop," Yusuh Mehdi, a senior vice president for Microsoft, told Bloomberg TV. The company also explicitly pitched the new Surface as a laptop replacement noting that it is is thinner than the 11-inch MacBook Air.
This is nothing new—every company making a tablet wants to take Apple down a notch. But considering the rapid growth of all tablets on the market, there once seemed to be plenty of room for upstarts. At least until recent months as Apple sold three million fewer iPad then analysts expected—an indication not of increased competition, but of possible disinterest in tablets.
Behind the overall slowdown in the tablet market, analysts suggest, is the improving power and larger screens of smartphones. Earlier estimates of continuously rapid growth in the tablet market also seem to have been overly optimistic. It was once thought people would replace their tablets every two years, like they do with their phones, but tablet get replaced far less regularly. The entire tablet market grew 3.9 percent over the last year, market research group IDC reported earlier this month.
While Microsoft describes its new tablet as something of a hybrid, it is hardly the first tablet maker to make such claims. Apple and Samsung, neither of which have gone down this route, still dominate the market. None of this means that the Surface Pro 3 won't be the Surface tablet that finally breaks the cycle of disappointment for Microsoft. But the challenges seem to grow with each successive version.
Source : http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-05-20/a-tablet-too-late-microsofts-new-surface-greets-a-slowing-market
