One area where Microsoft has been flourishing over the past years is tablet and laptop hardware, namely the Surface part. Turns out that they actually may leave that behind, if analysts are to be believed. 2019 is some sort of deadline apparently.
The Redmond company is said to be ditching the Surface series of tablets and laptops come 2019, according to people in the know. They include Canalys CEO, Steve Brazier, who uses the argument that Satya Nadella is more of a “software guy”, so that’s why hardware culd be left behind. The statement came during the 10th Canalys Channels Forum in Venice. The same official claimed that Surface performance is rather choppy, with some good quarters, but also some bad ones and overall money isn’t being made.
The idea is also mimicked by Gianfranco Lanci, corporate president and chief operating officer at Lenovo, who claimed that he thinks Microsoft could give up on the hardware biz by 2019. Lanci even said it could happen earlier and the fact that Microsoft is making a lot of money with the cloud may see them directing all efforts there and neglecting hardware. Windows and Office are also bringing money, but devices are a big hole.
Windows Phone and Mobile devices are already dead and we never actually knew a real market share for Surface tablets. Tablets as a whole are going down, so these assumptions are pretty solid, but in reality Surface may remain a flagship vanity project, a spearhead that any company needs to show off. You think that Google really needs those Pixels to stay alive? Vanity!
