Well, Maybe Someone Will Buy the Surface Pro …
Sales of Microsoft’s new Surface tablet probably weren’t ever going to break records — they certainly haven’t so far. Detwiler Fenton, a Boston-based brokerage firm, estimates that Microsoft sold just 500,000 to 600,000 Surface RTs in the December quarter. But things might improve with the debut of Surface Pro, which is slated to show up early this year.
The Pro, with its Intel Core i5 processor and support for the full Office suite, is targeted at business and the prosumer markets. And according to some analysts, it’s not a stretch to think it will do well in them. Indeed, Davenport & Co. analyst Drake Johnstone says there’s some promise to the Pro, and sees at least one scenario in which it could spur sales of a few million.
“It is possible that Microsoft could generate solid enterprise demand for the new Surface Pro tablet,” Johnstone theorizes. “[It] will run legacy Windows 7 software applications (including Microsoft Office) and will also run Windows 8 applications. It is possible that corporations could be attracted to the Surface Pro tablet as a replacement for laptop PCs.”
And if that happens, Microsoft could sell a few of them — enough, perhaps, to get the market and investors thinking more positively about Windows 8’s prospects. Said Johnstone, “If Microsoft is able to sell at least two million Surface Pro tablets per quarter over the remainder of fiscal 2013, then investors might assume that Windows 8 PC/tablet sales could improve in the second half of calendar 2013.”
“If.” “Could.” We’ll see, I guess.