A recent piece of research from Digitimes shows that the Surface Tablet may end up damaging the entire notebook segment thanks to its appeal. Microsoft’s recently launched slate is able to replace both regular slates and notebooks, especially paired with a keyboard that looks as hot as the Touch one it delivers.
Digitimes Research senior analyst James Wang is making this claim and he also claims that the only extra thing that Surface needs is a more complete app software ecosystem. Right now Surface Tablet can achieve a short term growth, but it will be hard to keep that up for a long while. In order to start ruling tablets, the new Microsoft product must get expanded shipments and attract more application designers to try and establish an ecosystem. The problem is that people are drawn a lot to the Android market, not being so fond of the Windows RT platform.
Since Android is an open platform and has an unique business model, Microsoft will have a hard time to compete with it. They may have to head the same way as Apple, meaning the business area, where they’re both closed platforms with integrated software and hardware. Apple, Google and Amazon prefer to abandon profit from hardware, OS, software, but they increase profits from content or advertising for example. Microsoft has the advantage of taking its revenue from all of the profits, but they must first conquer the public.
