A few days ago we had a scoop saying that Microsoft was about to can their Surface lineup entirely come 2019 or so. It seemed suspicious at the time, since Surface products are doing good and now a Microsoft official reacted and said it’s all basically fake news.
The boss of the Surface biz, Panos Panay criticized the rumors saying that Microsoft was about to get out of the Surface business. Interestingly, the story had serious sources, like Canalys CEO Steve Brazier and Gianfranco Lanci, corporate president at Lenovo. They both claimed that business wasn’t profitable for Microsoft, so an exit was expected. Since Microsoft’s own man claims that this is not happening, we tend to believe him.
Panay calls it a “tabloid rumor of the week”. Here’s the actual quote from Business Insider:
Microsoft isn’t running for the exits. Instead, the company is in hardware for the long haul, and Surface isn’t going anywhere, he said.
In part that’s because for Microsoft the Surface business is more important than selling hardware, he said. Improvements Microsoft has made to the Surface devices have often led to similar improvements across the entire PC market, he said. For example, as Microsoft has improved the speed and accuracy of its stylus, Surface Pen, that code has made its way back into Windows 10, improving the experience of using a stylus on PCs from other manufacturers.
To be honest we’ve heard such statements before, related to Windows RT, Windows Phone and Lumias and look where they are now. The Surface is getting much more love than these products to be honest, but the whole tablet segment has been stagnating for a while now, so let’s see what happens…
