UBS Analyst Claims Microsoft’s Surface Tablet Is Off To A Slow Start

By: Jeff Stewart  |   January 18th, 2013   |   Apple, Business, iOS, News, Tablets

When Microsoft was gearing to launch its very first piece of hardware, the Surface tablet, the maker of Windows had estimated that  it would sell around 2 million units of the new slate. However, due to several glitches in their latest OS the multinational company failed to leave a good first impression on tech users. As a result of that Microsoft has achieved the paltry 1 million units sales mark for Surface RT tablets. Due to this reason Brent Thill, a UBS analyst, believes that Surface tablet of Microsoft had a slow start and that the snags with the OS were not the only problems that severely damaged sales. He believes Apple’ s iPads also played a crucial role in limiting the number of  Windows 8 based tablet sold. The iOS powered slates achieved a sale figure of more than 20 million units during the same period.

 

This increase in the number of iPad sales indicates that people are preferring iOS tabs over Surface, says Thill. The analysts also thinks that limited distribution was another reason behind the low sales of Surface, as Microsoft put its slates for sale only in its own stores during the previous quarter.

 

However, this does not mean that Thill is not positive about the future of the Surface series. As the analyst believes that the upcoming Surface Pro which bears an Intel chip will be able to lure corporations, if it proves a good alternative for iPads.

 

Business Insider has reported that on the whole, Thill has chopped the estimates for the holiday season because of Microsoft’s terrible data points during the holiday period:

 

“Cutting FQ2 by $1.1B/$0.08 to $21.3B/$0.76 (Street $21.7B/$0.76) on lower Windows division revs to $5.9B (from $6.7B) on CQ4 PC sales -6.4% per IDC and our revised Surface RT sales estimate of 1M units (prior 2M). PCs also hit MBD transactional revs cutting MBD to $5.6B from $5.9B. With PC weakness likely to linger we cut FQ3 to $21.0B/$0.76 from $21.5B/$0.78 (Street $20.9B/$0.78). FY13 est’s cut to $79.6B/$2.80 (revs +8.0%, margins 36.6%) from $80.8B/$2.90.”

 

Source: BusinessInsider

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