Microsoft Surface, Will it kill the i-pad? Options

[Licentia Per Ori...]

So unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last couple of months you will know that Microsoft are planning to jump into the tablet space.

This is currently dominated by Apple.
Will Microsoft take apples crown?

many people are of the opinion that it's going to give apple a serious kicking, and will migrate more people to the microsoft eco-system, resulting in lower future sales of i-phones and i-pods to boot.

Personally i think it will do more, It has the capabilities to dominate the tablet market.

my reasoning is that.
1. It works at work.
I pad is great and that, but if you work in an office chances are you use windows there. You will use MS office,
The i-pad does not work well with Windows, The surface will be designed to work with it seamlessly.

2. It out specs the i-pad.
Microsoft are releasing two versions with the pro version packing an Ivy bridge i5!
It's a serious but of kit.

3. the keyboard.
Yea it's a tablet, but putting the keyboard on it.
(and crucially giving it away for free)
make the windows tablet a true contender for laptop replacement.
Even the biggest apple fan-boi out there will admit that the i-pad is good for consuming content (watching and reading things)
but is completely crap when it comes to creating content (like forum posts)

So what are your thoughts?
are Microsoft going to dominate in the hand-held market?
the i-phone 5 is launching, and no one is excited about it.
But the new Nokia phones are far more exciting,
and will having your PC, Tablet, Phone and Games console all operate on a single integrated eco system attract customers to Microsoft?

[X-M-O]

are Microsoft going to dominate in the hand-held market?
the i-phone 5 is launching, and no one is excited about it.
But the new Nokia phones are far more exciting,
and will having your PC, Tablet, Phone and Games console all operate on a single integrated eco system attract customers to Microsoft?

No, Microsoft will not dominate the market in this area, but for more reasons than their capabilities or the capabilities of their hardware/software. Primarily, Microsoft has less "fans" by far than Apple does, but also because Microsoft does not innovate in ways that companies like IBM and Apple have done. The last time MSFT had relatively large volume (over 50,000) was July 12th when they announced Windows Server 2012 Essentials Beta Release. The next day the stock returned to normal activity. The same thing has happened prior to that (and since then) whenever news has been released, and because there are a great deal of MSFT shares out there, it's difficult to move the stock so you can't always say the price of the stock means that investors see it as a successful stock, because in this case it would take a great deal to move the stock by more than a dollar. Thus, I'm using volume to show the excitement/emotional activity in MSFT during news events. And this news event has merely triggered a volume of 51,000 by the end of the day (ending the day with a grand total of 20 cents more than it opened).
There isn't enough excitement over anything Microsoft does for investors to really give it a boost.
Meanwhile, Apple only has roughly a daily volume average of 15,000 and moves anywhere from 2 dollars to 20 dollars in a single day. And then when big news events take place (such as the recent iPhone 5 announcement) it moves large (in this case nearly 13 dollars).
This expresses the interest in a company like Apple versus a company like Microsoft.
(The primary reason there is more volume in MSFT than APPL is because MSFT has far more shares available than Apple, and MSFT's shares cost roughly 30 dollars each versus APPL's shares costing roughly 700 dollars each. So you can't have as many people buying because that amount of money simply doesn't exist in the market during this economy, because people are less willing to put more risk out there so they go with a stock like MSFT that barely moves at all - which is another reason it gets so much activity despite that activity not really benefiting the stock overall.)

So it is untrue to say that "no one is excited about the iPhone 5 launch" as the market determines that excitement (there are many people who buy Apple stock because they believe in Apple, and then there are those who buy it because they have seen its sales and public reaction that boosts those sales, and they expect that it will do as it has done in the past; though even if the public is saturated with iPhones, you will find a great deal of them still buying the latest iPhone - especially in the age range of 17 to 35).
It might be true that people you know personally don't seem interested, but don't be surprised if many of them end up owning an iPhone 5 before the year is done.


A valid point you are making is that the options in the new Microsoft tablet will be attractive to the public, and this might be true, however consider the last "successful" Microsoft release: Windows 7.
"Commercial retail sales of Windows increased two percent due to Windows 7's launch (link for reference)", and that isn't much at all - as a matter of fact, it's horrible by comparison to every Apple product released since 2000... (And here's the most recent quarterly report from Apple. See the bottom of the page for a chart expressing their finances.)


Apple will not be dramatically affected by this new Microsoft product, and Microsoft will likely lose sales because so many people already own a tablet (iPad) and don't need another luxury electronic in this economy.

There will, undoubtedly, be many retail sales based on the compatibility that this product will have in relation to other Microsoft products, however that is not enough to boost sales. And the new apps idea they have isn't enough to really change the way things are going for the iPad (unless Microsoft goes against its nature and past by allowing things to be more open than Apple allows - and still that isn't enough in an overbought market like the tablet market).