Surface Book Ignores Apple To Save Microsoft

Oct 15, 2015

Let’s talk about Microsoft and its Surface family. In the typical style of Microsoft, It took three iterations to get both the Surface and the Surface Pro to the point where I would be happy to recommend them (which makes me wonder just how good the Surface Book 3 will be). Now I’ve had the weekend to think about the launch of the new Surface products last week, I’ve been thinking less about Microsoft’s best-case scenario for the hardware, and more about the most-likely scenario and how this helps Microsoft as a company.

It’s less a case of ‘embrace, extend, extinguish’ and more a case of ‘protect, project, and prosper’.

There are three areas where I think the new Surface Pro 4 and the Surface Book devices are going to have a positive impact on Microsoft and its ecosystem, and specifically help save Windows’ market share in hardware sales.

First of all, I don’t think that the aim here is to replicate Apple’s business model of high margins on high-end hardware. This is not an attempt to clone the success of the MacBook project. There’s nothing on offer in the new line up to lure back people from OSX and the various MacBooks built and sold by Apple. Changing to a new operating system is a big commitment, and those that have already made the switch from Windows to OSX (or who were never on Windows in the first place) are unlikely to come over to Windows 10 in the near future. The Surface devices, especially the Surface Book in my opinion, are to stop people leaving Windows hardware behind for the cutting edge, stylish, high-specs world of Mac.

Microsoft is standing up to shout ‘We can be just as shiny, just as innovative, and just as gorgeous as those devices. Ignore them, stay here’ Stemming the flow of users switching to the other platform is going to be one of the Surface range’s key performance indicators.

Perhaps in previous years third-party manufacturers building Windows laptops could be relied on to do this, but not now. While there are a number of high-end laptop lines available, none of them are as well-known as the MacBook lines, and manufacturers are focusing resources further down the pricing portfolio. Microsoft alone can move the marketing needle and the public perception with a high-end device. With the Surface Book it has done just that.

There is a good chance that the Surface devices will kickoff a halo effect on Windows – people will be able to consider alternatives to Microsoft’s devices, and there are laptops and tablets that have echoes of the Surface range available for purchase at a lower cost. The volume of discussion (and upcoming reviews) will help with that, and of course it all ties in to the availability of Windows 10.

In the short-term the Surface range represents a line in the sand. I still believe that Microsoft’s primary goal is to build up cloud services and subscription software as its primary revenue stream over the medium- to long-term, but it needs to project confidence and competency. Much as the Lumia handsets allow Microsoft to remain part of the smartphone conversation, the Surface devices allow Microsoft to (directly) be part of the hardware conversation.

Yes, there may be a future where Microsoft builds up the Surface brand to such an extent that it rivals that of Apple, but I would put that down as a rather lofty ambition, and one that while nice is not necessary for a positive outcome. Apple’s model is all about the profit on retail sales, Microsoft is focussed on the cloud, and every Surface sale brings another consumer closer to Microsoft’s services.

Surface gives Windows hardware a visible foothold in the high-end market, and Microsoft has the budget to push through a big PR campaign to keep it visible after this first week of interest. It shows a world of Windows where not every device is a race to the bottom in terms of price and hardware. It also shows that Microsoft is ready to become proactive itself, rather than wait for partners to get on board with suitable devices.

Surface, coupled with Windows 10, is Microsoft saying that ‘the buck stops here’. The reinvention of Microsoft as a platform-neutral software solution with cloud services is well under way, this is the moment that hardware joins Nadella’s revolution in his second wave of change.

Source: Forbes