Acer had planned to debut an RT tablet in the first quarter of 2013. But the company decided against it when Microsoft announced the Surface RT. “Originally we had a very aggressive plan to come out very early next year,” Acer President Jim Wong said of the company’s RT tablet last October. “But because of Surface … we are much more cautious. Originally our plan was Q1, but now I don’t think it will be earlier than Q2.”

Evidently, the ensuing months haven’t done much to convince Acer to bring a Windows RT tablet to market, because the company hasn’t launched one yet, and it continues to be cagey about its plans for doing so.

Speaking at a company event last Friday, Wong said Acer has decided against releasing a tablet running the current version of Windows RT, though it may build one for the next generation of the OS.

“The plan for an RT tablet is ongoing,” Wong said. “To be honest, there’s no value doing the current version of RT.”

Harsh words. But then, Windows RT tablet sales haven’t been all that hot. Certainly Acer isn’t missing out on much by taking a wait-and-see approach to the RT tablet market.

“I don’t think anybody has done a product that is the product that I see customers wanting. You can go through the products from all those guys … and none of them has a product that you can really use. Not Apple. Not Google. Not Amazon. … [Surface] is a first-class tablet that people can enjoy and appreciate. It’s a PC; it’s a tablet. It’s for play; it’s for work. It’s got a great price. That product doesn’t exist today.”

– Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

Microsoft is now one of the Top 5 tablet vendors worldwide, thanks to its Surface RT and Surface Pro devices — but not because either one is selling particularly well.

Research firm IDC says Microsoft shipped about 900,000 Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets in the first quarter of the year. That was enough to claim a fifth-place ranking on IDC’s latest worldwide tablet tracker, but with a very low percentage of the tablet market — just 1.8 percent.

That’s a pretty poor showing for a device that has been available since last October, though, to be fair, the Surface Pro didn’t begin shipping in North America until February. That late start almost certainly hampered sales.

That said, Microsoft shipped “just shy” of 900,000 Surface units last quarter, according to IDC, so the availability of the Pro version of the device doesn’t seem to have done all that much for sales. With both the Pro and the RT on the market, Microsoft’s tablet sales don’t even begin to come close to market leaders like Apple and Samsung, which shipped 19.5 million and 8.8 million tablets, respectively.

Not that anyone expected them to. Surface is a latecomer in a highly competitive market dominated by a company with a massive first-mover advantage. Still, you’d think that if Surface really did hit the sweet spot that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer described in the quote above, shipments would be a wee bit higher, no? Clearly, the company has got a lot of work ahead of it if it hopes to change users’ expectations for tablets.

Microsoft, which has not yet disclosed any Surface sales data or guidance, did not respond to a request for comment.

The software giant is developing a new lineup of its Surface tablets, including a seven-inch version expected to go into mass production later this year, said people familiar with the company’s plans.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

In a Monday broadcast, China National Radio, a mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, called on Microsoft to adjust its warranty on Surface to reflect local practices. The company currently offers a one-year parts-and-repair warranty on the tablet; Beijing believes it should also provide an additional two-year warranty on major parts.

Coming as it does after similar outcry against Apple prompted the iPhone maker to issue a rare public apology and pledge to amend its warranty and repair policies, some are speculating that China is looking for a similar response from Microsoft. China National Radio insists this isn’t the case. A reporter for the outlet told Bloomberg that the story was driven by listener complaints about Microsoft’s Surface warranty.

And that may well be the case. Thing is, Surface debuted in China just a few months ago. So, any tablet sold in the country is well covered by Microsoft’s current warranty, belying those reports of consumer complaints.

It’s certainly possible that Chinese consumers feel that Microsoft should provide that additional two-year parts warranty, but right now there’s little reason for them to feel unfairly deprived of it. Surface hasn’t been available in China long enough for them to actually need it. Every single Surface sold in China so far has at least five months left on its parts-and-repair warranty.

Reached for comment, Microsoft insisted the warranty it offers on Surface does indeed satisfy China’s requirements.

“Consistent with Chinese law, Surface Pro and its main components are covered under a two-year warranty. Microsoft’s warranty for Surface (and all our products) complies with – and may exceed – what local consumer law requires,” a company spokesman told AllThingsD. “We stand behind our products with a manufacturer’s warranty – which is additional to our commitment to honor any statutory obligation – as either a manufacturer or retailer – to repair or replace a faulty product.”

It’s pretty significant for Microsoft (and definitely a big deal for Aviary), but you’ll have to indulge me in a bit of nerding out to hear why.

In a nutshell, a new platform is only as good as the apps that populate it. And right now, Windows 8 is starting from scratch, with Microsoft courting the thousands of developers out there creating programs for other tried-and-true platforms like Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android. So to convince developers to build apps for yet another platform like Windows 8 isn’t an easy sale.

But Aviary’s SDK release may make it just a little less difficult. Instead of developers building photo-editing software from scratch into their applications, picking up Aviary’s tool kit allows developers to quickly integrate and deploy a host of photo-centric tools into their apps, cutting out some of the heavy lifting and freeing up resources to do other things.

So, in theory, the less time it takes a developer to write a Windows 8 app, the more likely they are to do it. That’s a win for Microsoft (if enough developers do it, that is), and it’s certainly a win for Aviary — if the company can coax said coders into using its tool kits.

A number of larger companies already swear by Aviary’s wares — Twitter, Flickr and Photobucket, to name a few — instituting the company’s software in mainstream, consumer-facing applications. That’s a pretty ringing endorsement for Aviary to use in its sales pitch.

Aviary’s Windows 8 SDK will launch with six partners to get things going. Now all Microsoft has to do is hope that the increased set of tools encourages developers to create more apps for the platform.

Jonas Daehnert

Nokia bet the farm on Windows Phone back in 2011, committing to a broad partnership under which Microsoft’s mobile OS would be its primary smartphone strategy. Two years later, it continues to struggle toward what has so far been an elusive recovery. So it’s understandable that the Finnish handset maker might worry that Microsoft’s foray into the tablet world with Surface might herald a similar “exploratory” jaunt into the smartphone market. And, according to Nokia’s latest 6-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that is a very real fear.

Among the multitude of Microsoft-related uncertainties listed in the “Risk Factors” portion of Nokia’s 20-F is this one, helpfully flagged by Business Insider:

“Microsoft may make strategic decisions or changes that may be detrimental to us. For example, in addition to the Surface tablet, Microsoft may broaden its strategy to sell other mobile devices under its own brand, including smartphones. This could lead Microsoft to focus more on their own devices and less on mobile devices of other manufacturers that operate on the Windows Phone platform, including Nokia.”

It could indeed. And while Microsoft would surely insist that such a handset is — like Surface — simply a reference design meant to show other manufacturers what’s possible, that device would most certainly be — like Surface — a piece of go-to-market, Microsoft-branded hardware.

Which means it would put Microsoft between Nokia and its smartphone customers. And no good can come of that.

In other words, the real risk factor for Nokia in this situation isn’t losing Microsoft’s attention, it’s being forced to compete against it the way Redmond’s longtime hardware partners now must in the Windows 8 tablet market. Who wants to do that? Certainly not Nokia, which has its hands more than full with the likes of Apple and Samsung, HTC, Motorola and the rest of the Android armada.

Asked for his take on recent reports that the PC market will continue to contract through 2013, Jun Dong-soo — president of Samsung’s memory chip division — said he doesn’t expect the PC industry to rebound anytime soon. And if and when it does, that rebound won’t be driven by Windows 8.

“The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8,” Jun said. “I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform.”

No better than Vista? Too cruel, too cruel.

And Jun was just getting started. That Vista quip was part of a one-two sucker punch that ended with a slag of another one of Microsoft’s big new efforts.

“[Microsoft's] rollout of its Windows Surface tablet is seeing lackluster demand,” he said. “Meanwhile, previous vigorous pitches by Intel and MS for thinner ultra-books simply failed and I believe that’s mostly because of the less-competitive Windows platform.”

A brutal commentary on Windows 8, which has so far utterly failed to catalyze PC sales. That said, as I’ve noted here before, Microsoft isn’t the only responsible party here. PC makers clearly blew it as well by failing to release hardware that capitalized on Windows 8’s strengths.

In a wide-ranging interview with Charlie Rose on “CBS This Morning,” Microsoft Chairman and co-founder Bill Gates made a little news — or a lot of it, if you are a reader of internal tea leaves at the software giant — in noting that the company’s early mobile strategy was “clearly a mistake.”

But, perhaps more interestingly, when asked about the meh performance of Steve Ballmer, who replaced Gates as CEO some years ago, the typically non-diplomatic tech legend declined to throw his longtime confidant over the side.

Instead, he strapped himself to Ballmer, in an orgy of “he-and-I” band-of-brothers statements that clearly linked the duo, even though Rose’s question was specifically about how Ballmer was doing.

“He and I are two of the most self-critical people you can imagine,” said Gates, noting a lot of “amazing things” such as Surface and Xbox in the Ballmer regime. “Is it enough? No, he and I are not satisfied that in terms of breakthrough things that we’re doing everything possible.”

Gates did note the obvious in addressing the slowness of Microsoft in the mobile market over the last several years, which has allowed rivals like Apple and Google to dominate the key sector.

“There’s a lot of things like cellphones where we didn’t get out in the lead early,” said Gates. “We didn’t miss cellphones, but the way that we went about it didn’t allow us to get the leadership.”

No, it did not, but Gates is not blaming Ballmer for it, it seems.

Watch for yourself:

To wit, a new report from Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Holt, who argues that Microsoft is leaving money on the table by not releasing Office for iOS. A lot of money.

Holt figures that if Microsoft were to release Office for iOS, pricing it at $60, it could potentially sell it to roughly 30 percent of iPad users. Extend that to an installed base of 200 million iPads in 2014, and Holt concludes that Microsoft would generate about $2.5 billion in revenue per year on Office for iPad — less Apple’s App Store commission.

Now, Holt’s math here is back-of-the-napkin at best, but even so, it makes a valid point. By not releasing Office for iPad, the company is surely leaving a bunch of milk in one of its most important cash cows.

But it’s not like Microsoft doesn’t know that. And it’s more likely than not that the company is very carefully weighing tradeoffs here, and trying to determine if keeping Office off iOS is a sufficient incentive for enterprise to use Surface and other Windows tablets. Indeed, asked about Office for iPad at the Goldman Sachs conference earlier this week, CFO Peter Klein seemed to suggest that Microsoft is keeping the door open for it.

“We have a history of cross-platform delivery broadly in productivity, whether it’s Office on the Mac, or email, communications, note-taking,” Klein said. “And with our Web applications you can access Office documents, do some light editing on any device and on any browser. So there’s a lot of things that we’re already doing to meet that need. And we’ll continue to think about other things going forward.”

During his appearance at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday, Microsoft CFO Peter Klein said the company is ready, willing and able to bring a range of new form factors to the mobile device market. It’s ready to go smaller, with a device akin to the iPad mini. And it’s ready to go larger, as well. And whether it chooses one route or the other — or both — will likely be determined by the consumer.

“We’re set up for that,” Klein said of extending Windows to devices of varying size. “The notion of flexibility and scalability of the operating system is intrinsic to our strategy.”

Specifically, Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 share the same kernel. Because of that, the applications that run on them can easily be scaled up or down according to display size.

“We can have the same core code base driving form factors from four inches all the way up to 27-inch ones and everything in between,” Klein said. “So I think we are well set up to respond to demand as we see it. We can deliver a versatile set of experiences across form factors, whether they’re four-inch, five-inch, seven-inch, 10-inch or 13-inch.”

That’s a broad spectrum of device sizes to consider. But the one Microsoft is most likely focused on is that seven-inch sweet spot Apple recently tapped into with great success with its iPad mini. As Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently told CRN, the company is not going to leave any market segment uncontested to Apple.

“We are not going to let annyyyyyyyyyyyyy piece of this [go to Apple],” he said. “Not the consumer cloud. Not hardware/software innovation. We are not leaving any of that to Apple by itself. Not going to happen! Not on our watch!”

Hello, and happy Read In the Bathtub Day! (AllThingsD takes no responsibility for any damage to your electronics caused by reading this post in the bathtub.)

Here are our top 10 stories from the week of 2/4:

1.) Coming Soon to Yahoo: Ads From Google

2.) Twitter Got Hacked. Expect More Companies to Follow.

3.) Surface Pro: Hefty Tablet Is a Laptop Lightweight

4.) A Tasty Little Slice of Geek History: PBS’s “Silicon Valley” (Video)

5.) Samsung’s Super Bowl Ad Leaves Apple Alone

6.) In One Fell Swoop, Facebook Glitch Deep-Sixes the Web

7.) BlackBerry Z10 Off to a Strong Start in U.K.

8.) Why Twitter Is Buying Bluefin — And Why Bluefin Is Selling [Sidebar: Bluefin will also be presenting at D: Dive Into Media next week.]

9.) Salesforce Just Made Another Quiet Acquisition

10.) Nudged by Apple, Twitter’s Porn Saga Ends in a Raw Deal for Vine

For more of the week in review, please follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

The software giant had planned a big New York launch party Friday night for the Surface Pro, which goes on sale Saturday. Panos Panay, who leads the Surface effort, had planned to preside over an event at a Manhattan Best Buy to mark the debut.

However, the huge East Coast blizzard is forcing Microsoft to call off the event.

“Surface Pro launch activities in NYC have been cancelled due to weather; our best wishes for everyone impacted by the blizzard,” Microsoft said in a statement.

Surface Pro is the Intel-based big brother to the Surface RT tablet that went on sale in October. It adds an Intel chip for more processing power and compatibility with older Windows software. However, the added performance comes with added weight and shorter battery life. (Here’s Walt Mossberg’s review of the device.)

Surface Pro will go on sale on Saturday as scheduled at Best Buy and Staples, and at Microsoft’s own online and brick-and-mortar stores.

During an Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on Reddit Wednesday, Surface GM Panos Panay and his team spoke to the perceived battery-life problem with the Surface Pro, and hinted that Microsoft may have already developed a means of addressing it.

First off, Panay et al don’t seem much concerned that the Surface Pro offers three hours less battery life than its Surface RT sibling, and less than half the stamina of the iPad. Microsoft wanted strong performance out of the Pro, and that required some trade-offs.

“The product was designed to take full advantage of Windows 8, coupled with the Ivy Bridge core processor from Intel,” Panay explained. “We created a product that did not compromise speed, performance in any way. With that, we wanted to be the best notebook/laptop product in its class, but still deliver you the tablet form factor. This product is optimized in every way to take advantage of the full third-generation Core i5 it runs, yet give the best battery life. If you compare it to say a MacBook Air, you will quickly see that pound for pound in battery size versus battery life, you will find optimizations that puts Surface best in its class. That said, we picked a smaller battery to be sure we were able to give you the same performance and to keep it thin.”

So, yes, it appears that Microsoft did compromise on Surface Pro battery life. Speed, performance and form factor all took precedence over stamina. But perhaps that’s because the company knew it could address the battery longevity issue in the future with a peripheral. Asked about the mysterious connectors on the Surface Pro that aren’t built into the Surface RT, Panay hinted that they were capable of carrying more current than other connectors, and designed with an eye toward supporting peripherals.

“We haven’t announced what [those connectors] are for but they aren’t an accident,” Panay said. “At launch we talked about the ‘accessory spine’ and hinted at future peripherals that can click in and do more. Those connectors look like [they] can carry more current than the pogo pins, don’t they?”

An interesting remark. More interesting still when you consider Panay’s reply to a question about the company’s plans for an external battery. Here’s the exchange:

Q: Does Microsoft have any plans for an external battery or for a thicker keyboard cover that has an extra battery? Or, if I want an external battery brick, is there a third party one I can buy that can be used with the surface.

A: That would require extending the design of the accessory spine to include some way to transfer higher current between the peripheral and the main battery. Which we did…

Now, that’s far from hard confirmation that Microsoft has some sort of battery-equipped Surface Pro cover in the pipeline. But it seems pretty clear that the company has at least considered the possibility. At the very least, it’s planning for some sort of accessory that requires more current than the RT’s connectors can provide, and, given criticism of the Pro’s stamina, an external battery would be a good one to have.