While there is no indication that Microsoft plans to release sales numbers in the near future, we have reports from various research firms willing to speculate on how well their sales have been doing lately. The most recent numbers are looking ok for the new platform. Not great, by any means, but the Windows 8 tablet is far from dead on arrival and has seen some modest gains lately.
IDC estimates that Microsoft sold about 900,000 Surface units, probably mostly the Surface Pro model, during the first quarter of this year. That accounts for 1.8% of the overall tablet market, but definitely represents more success than their Q4 2012 numbers were able to provide. Even though the Q4 numbers coming out of Bloomberg were higher, taking the holiday sales trends into account makes the early 2013 results more impressive by comparison. That doesn’t
Strategy Analytics looked beyond the Surface line to check out the whole Windows 8 tablet market. They determined that there were likely 3 million sold during this past quarter. That includes the Surface line as well as a number of other devices from Microsoft’s hardware partners.
That would seem to indicate more success among the non-Surface tablets than many had expected. While there is a selection to work with at this point, it is hardly a large one. We’re still waiting on some of the more impressive designs that have only been hinted at as well as the promised smaller versions that will compete in terms of size and price against popular Android tablets like the Nexus 7 and the Kindle Fire HD.
All of this puts Microsoft in the position of holding around 3% of the tablet market globally.
That comes at a time when there is a lot of transition going in throughout this area. Android has finally surpassed iOS as the operating system of choice among tablet owners. 27.8 million Android tablets were shipped last quarter compared to 19.5 million iPads. Everybody is experiencing fairly steady growth and the market as a whole continues to expand as adoption increases.
While they don’t really have the standing to compete with either Apple or Google head to head with their current products, the outlook could be good for Microsoft.
They are almost ready to expand Surface availability beyond the US and Canada (and China, though apparently it’s not particularly easy to come by there at the moment for various reasons). This will open up a lot of potential sales.
The introduction of smaller Surface tablets has a good chance of bringing the numbers up as well. Even the iPad Mini is selling well despite mediocre performance and poor system specs compared to its competition. A similarly priced tablet in the same bracket could have a huge impact in Windows 8 device sales if Microsoft keeps their product standards as high as we’ve seen so far.
Right now they can be said to have a foot in the door. It remains to be seen how far they will go to make this work. Microsoft has the potential to do something big here, but that doesn’t mean it’s a sure thing.
