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Although Microsoft itself has admitted that initial sales of its Surface tablets have been on the “modest” side of expectations, that hasn’t stopped it from pushing ahead with plans for a second generation of Surface hardware.
According to data tweeted by the usually reliable MS Nerd account, the next-gen Surface tablets will be led by a Surface RT 2 device that’ll arrive with an 8.6″ display and be powered by a Qualcomm chipset, with MS moving away from the current Surface’s Nvidia core to provide the power for its smallest tablet.
The software giant is also planning to update the Surface Pro, introducing an 11.6″ device that’ll appear powered by an AMD “Temash” processor, with MS again switching hardware provider, this time dumping the Intel chipset that powers the current Surface Pro. Finally, a third Surface will appear. This will be an enormous 14.6″ device running on Intel’s new 22nm Haswell processor range.
You still have plenty of time to get the most out of your existing Surface (ahem) though, as none of the above will appear before the middle of 2013 at the earliest. [Neowin]
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Wait, hold on… okay. Now I am ready.
It’s always a great marketing strategy, when your initial sales have been modest, to announce that the product is going to be replaced shortly by a more up to date model.
So that’ll be why they’ve announced precisely nothing then…
Oh dear Microsoft !!
This just screams of the Dancing Bald guy again (no not Darrell)
All sounds a little panicy to me
14.6″ device might be cool. im getting bored of little screens.
Cool, it’s good that they’re persisting with Surface.
I finally found a place where you can get a hands-on with an RT in London, at the InBay store in Holborn if anyone is interested.
Definitely gonna get the pro at some point in the future, depending on my financial situation.
The pro reportedly has around 4 hour battery life.. not to mention the super high price.. I can’t see how these are going to sell. A lot of business’s will steer clear because it’s windows 8 and the price alone with push others away too..
@coastercub Rumour monger much? There are no hands-on tests for the Surface Pro yet, so you have no hard info on battery life, but similarly specced Ultrabooks get 6-8 hours, so 4 seems unlikely.
The people who will buy Surface Pros are the people who want a single device that can do *everything* that they need from a laptop and a tablet – the people who don’t want to have to carry two devices when they travel. An iPad or android tablet can do maybe 80% of those things but, for example, they can’t run Office (which rules them out for most work-from-home functions – and no, the “compatible” apps aren’t good enough because they still mess up formatting, tables, etc. which actually matter in a business context). Same applies to Photoshop, Dreamweaver, etc. Put simply: a Win8 tablet is a full-powered work tool AND an entertainment device, whereas iPads and android tablets are really only the latter.
Rumour Monger, moi.. no, just repeating what other tech sites have reported.
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/Surface-Pro-Battery-Life-Surface-RT-Half,news-41370.html
Not the only site to report it either..
And as for the other things you’ve said, most business’s will stay away. I know my company ain’t going near it yet. Don’t know any that are either. and as for the your average consumer, they’ll have to seriously think twice about it. Just leaves the tech nerds and the microsoft faithful and that probably isn’t a big enough market. I’m not saying it’s going to fail just that it’s a tough sell
I think for a lot of people the price will be a sticking point. If I had the money, I’d love to own one – but I don’t, so I won’t.
Sales have been modest.. well yer.. there is no where to try it out, no where to buy it from other than MS.. they handicapped their own sales policy and its full of issues that are stupid, like half the actual memory, the keyboard they told us was like a vital limb and then billed extra for it not to mention that it falls to bits after a month or two.. on the whole, they have broken every rule of tech sales possible.. so i hope they are not shocked that it had modest sales..
It would help if people could get there hands one to try it! i am yet to see a store have one to play with, and it being such a new product im not surprised sales are modest
okay I’ll wait 6 month for the “new surface” and 3 more for the “surface mini”.
yep im totally ready to ignore it just like i did the current one