
Report: Microsoft the top-selling tablet maker based on online sales in October - wslh
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/114316/20151209/microsoft-surface-overtakes-apple-s-ipad-as-top-selling-tablet-online.htm
======
dangoor
I've seen others knock down this report already, but I'm having trouble
finding a link. What those other articles noted is that this is US-only,
online-only sales (and I believe from people who opted in to provide this
data). Apple sells a lot of iPads at their own stores, and certainly outside
of the US.

Ahh, here's one of the sites that did a take down of this report:

[https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/ios/62854/so-did-surface-
rea...](https://www.thurrott.com/mobile/ios/62854/so-did-surface-really-
outsell-ipad-in-october)

~~~
KirinDave
The knock against this this is that it's a very clickbaity title. If it's
true, it's a big deal, but the title made it to be a BIGGER deal by implying
it's all sales. Which would be huge, but also absurd.

The idea that Surface is selling well should be taken away even if the article
is clickbaity. By all accounts, MS is hitting supply walls with Skylake before
they meet demand or cross some sort of arbitrary sales goal they want to
maintain [0]. They're sold out everywhere and backordered on the SP4 and SB.
I'm glad I pre-ordered!

And the MS devkit? It's.. um.. I mean I know that people will be shocked to
hear it but it's not only really damn good these days, but it's open source.
Look at how you do Async programming on Windows Phone with C# or JavaScript,
and what kinda performance gains you get. Check out the MS GitHub and see how
much of themselves they've put out there and opened to the community.

It's a big deal. I'm actually enthusiastic to join their dev community.

[0]: [http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-core-i5-i7-processors-
glob...](http://wccftech.com/intel-skylake-core-i5-i7-processors-global-
shortage/) [http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/there-will-be-a-major-
sh...](http://www.pcr-online.biz/news/read/there-will-be-a-major-shortage-of-
skylake-cpus-until-end-of-november/036847) [http://www.winbeta.org/news/rumor-
surface-book-surface-pro-4...](http://www.winbeta.org/news/rumor-surface-book-
surface-pro-4-shipments-delayed-due-intel-skylake-shortages)

~~~
cwyers
We used to just call clickbaity headlines "headlines," and the entire point of
them is to be concise and get you to read the whole article.

~~~
galago
I think we called them 'titles' or 'misleading titles'. Magazines with the
article titles on the front would do this and I think it was distinctly
different from say, a newspaper where the article started right below the
headline. The magazine is actually hoping you don't see any of the article
before you've bought the magazine (and possibly seen ads.)

------
Maarten88
I'm happy about this and hope there is some truth to this. It would signal to
developers that maybe there is a viable third platform for apps.

As a user I've long been a tablet fan, I own several iPads and Surface tablets
that are still actively used in our family. Until recently I used a Surface
Pro 1 for work, I'm now getting a shiny new and fully loaded Surface Pro 4.

Using a Surface tablet as a PC (with monitor and keyboard and mouse attached)
works very well, as many people have found. But Surface never really competed
with iPad as a tablet, purely using touch. I know nobody who uses and likes
Metro IE, Windows Mail, reads the newspaper using an app or plays games on it.

Except me: I've always felt that the only thing lacking on the Surface to
compete as a tablet is good Apps and users willing to invest time learning to
use it. People would find it actually is quite nice. Even the doomed Surface
RT2 is superior to an iPad for many tasks, once you "get" Metro IE, the
keyboard and multitasking gestures. I regularly write comments here on HN
using Surface in tablet mode, which is much less fun when I try it on an iPad.

When Surface really succeeds in the market, my hope is that the App platform
will finally start working. As a developer, the technology and tools feel
vastly superior and more productive that those of Android and iOS so I'd be
happy to start developing Windows-first again.

~~~
csixty4
You're going to love your Surface 4. My Surface Pro 2 is overtaking my iPad
for exactly the tasks you list: email, browsing, reading news (Flipboard) and
playing games.

I love that the same machine I use for dev can become my casual tablet in a
moment.

~~~
bphogan
I really want to use my Surface for development, but I can't get it to work.
Most of the work I do is command-line driven (Ruby, Elixir, Node) and I am so
used to Vim that the experience is just awful on Windows. I've installed Cmder
which helps a ton, but things are still wonky.

And that makes me quite sad.

~~~
csixty4
What's wonky about it? I installed vim through Chocolatey, but I rarely do
more than a few quick edits then :wq my way out of there. Most of my work is
done in Atom these days.

------
dade_
Aligns with my experience, Surface 3 Pro replaced my MacBook Pro and iPad air
last year and this year I've added a Sony Z3 compact 8" android tablet - which
is not an "inexpensive android" device, but it is waterproof, ridiculously
light and waterproof. Love it, no interest in going back. Not sure what I am
going to do with iPhone 5S... Easy to leave Apple at this point, especially
with the mess they made of iTunes.

~~~
johnchristopher
What is the Surface 3 Pro lacking that you still have a z3 ? (waterproof ?)

~~~
dade_
I've been using many different tablets since they came out (iOS, Android, BB,
Windows). I found that a large tablet is critical for productivity and I agree
that 10" is the minimum, but it is also too small for me. I also found that
thin 8" tablet is perfect for ereading, whether magazines, novels, Web
browsing, videos. However with the very high resolution display, it is also
handy for light productivity, I can use it to ssh or tunnel xwindow into my
debian boxes, review Office documents, and learn Spanish with duo lingo. Ever
fall asleep and drop a Surface on your face?

Microsoft has all but abandoned the smaller than 10 inch tablet (no longer in
the Microsoft stores) and I could find any high end windows tablets in that
category. Of the metro/universal apps, the ones I need are not available and
over the last few years many aren't being updated, lack features and are now
disappearing from the Windows app and store. And with windows/Android, I can
easily copy files between the devices and they both support Miracast (eg.
Microsoft wireless display adapter).

Long answer, hopefully useful.

------
danso
Though I wouldn't have guessed it earlier this year, this seems like a bygone
conclusion. Last night I tried out the iPad Pro for the first time while
killing time at an Apple Store...I liked it, though I've had an iPad since it
first came out so there's much less of that revelatory experience with each
iteration. The store had the iPad Pros set up with the keyboard cases and I've
never used my iPads with a keyboard so I was delightfully surprised that my
favorite OS X shortcut -- Cmd-Tab -- worked for application switching.
Unfortunately, none of the other shortcuts I'm used to worked, such as Cmd-T
to open a new tab in the browser, and so forth.

In a way, the iPad Pro felt like tablet's version of the uncanny
valley...close to "real" computing but not annoyingly not quite
enough...unless major overhauls are made to iOS, and every application built
on it thus far, I couldn't imagine using the iPad for anything more than media
consumption. And when I think about it, I hardly ever use the iPad for any app
that is iPad-only -- I use it mostly for web browsing, reading, and Netflix-
watching -- things I can switch effortlessly to on my Macbook.

I had thought the Surface was doomed to fail, in trying to serve both as a
tablet and as a regular computer and screwing up both...but in retrospect, it
seems like the intuitive strategy. Most tablet functionality is purely a
subset of what a regular laptop can do...and attempts to port OSX apps to iOS
have rarely resulted in something that was better as a native tablet app.
Adding to this, the majority of the computing world is already entrenched in
Windows applications...even as someone who has been almost exclusively OS X
for the last 10 years, my next tablet purchase will probably be a
Surface...doing productive work on Excel and Windows-versions of Sublime Text
is better than attempting it on iOS by far.

edit: And maybe familiarity breeds contempt -- and/or I'm entering in my tech-
curmudgeon phase...but besides the initial iterations on multi-touch -- two
fingers to scroll, pinching, stretching, rotation -- I've been less than
inspired by iOS's innovations in touch gestures. In fact, I find myself
frequently fighting against accidental actions, such as how dragging my
fingers a little lazily to the left while reading a webpage triggers the
browser's Back action. And how I'm frequently accidentally activating my Slack
app (because it's the only one I have that has multitasking?) when my fingers
do something on the right side of the browser. I feel we've reached the limits
of what we can intuitively express via finger-motion gestures and if Surface's
tablet functionality had far fewer of them...that would actually be a net
positive for me.

~~~
AJ007
I had the Surface 2 & 3 as primary mobile computer devices. The 2 I used a
year, the 3 less than a month due to a problem which may or may not have been
a defect. There should be some historical posts on hn where I was wrote that I
was shocked how great the 2 was. Now I'm 100% iPhone - iPad Pro - 2015
Macbook. Anything that requires heavy processor power is done through remote
servers.

From a security and privacy standpoint I feel a little bit better with Apple
than Google/Android. Microsoft I don't know enough about at this current point
in time to make a judgement call on.

With an iOS or Android device you can remote in to a Windows, Linux, or OSX
desktop. Every year things have become visibly better and easier to use. Much
of the biggest stuff is cross platform. If you use Adobe Creative Cloud you
can jump from Windows to OS X with no license switching issues. Many other
companies have followed.

Years back I attempted to go ultra mobile with a Fujitsu U810 (convertible
where the whole computer was about the size of your hand.) Watching the
transitions since then, today things feel very mature. Back then if I tried
using that thing I could work at about 1/20th speed. Now I'm desktop speed (my
last desktop had 3x 27" screens.) The high DPI mobile screens help a _massive_
amount.

You have to tweak your workflows and find the right apps. Sometimes small
things can be a big problem, such as a keyboard shortcut not working right
when you are remoted in through a tablet.

Te device matters less and less. It is now much more about weight, battery
life, heat output, and stability (not crashing when you pick it up weird,
which the Surface did to me often.)

------
whatever_dude
This is bonkers.

* A lot of people already have an iPad. No need for something new.

* The new iPad pro was just announced and not available yet. Less people willing to buy old stuff.

* The Surface had just been updated and is still building on the success of previous models.

This comparison is Steve Jobs-level of data creativity.

~~~
MBCook
All of that is irrelevant. As far as I can tell (and it seems the same for
others) there is nothing saying that this data includes Apple's 1st party
sales to consumers.

That's like saying Walgreens products are bombing in the market because no one
is selling them (and your data doesn't include Walgreens stores).

~~~
whatever_dude
Yeah, even worse.

------
wstrange
I bought my wife a Surface Pro 3 last year. We debated very hard over the SP
vs. a macbook. She does a lot of work with MS Office - so it seemed like a
good choice.

The bluetooth and wifi are now non functional (looks like a hardware issue),
and Microsoft wants $400 to replace the unit (it went out of warranty in
June).

Perhaps I have no reason to complain (it is out of warranty) - but I expect
high end hardware to last longer.

This will be the last Microsoft product I purchase.

~~~
dade_
I've had my own share of interesting S3 Pro issues expecially with Windows 10,
but almost all of them have been software / firmware related. You tried
restoring to Windows 8.1 and same problems?

~~~
wstrange
Yep - the suggestion from Microsoft was to downgrade to 8.1 - but that did not
help.

------
dang
Since people complained about the article title, we changed it to more neutral
language from the body of the article.

------
paulojreis
This is sad for me, not exactly by the Microsoft "win", but by the Apple
"loss". Yes, you can call me a devotee if you like.

What I feel is that the only company which cares (cared?) for design (bear in
mind: _true_ design, not decoration) and end-user experience has lost their
edge. It's sad for me, on one hand because I'd rather see more - not less -
companies being design oriented. On the other hand, pragmatically, it's also
worrying because I don't know which laptop/smartphone I should buy when my
current ones "expire".

I like/liked Apple because they had a fundamental vision; their devices didn't
seem to be full of gimmickry or spec/feature-oriented. Now they are releasing
phablets, hybrids, battery extending cases and operating systems full of new
features.

So, the mobile computing dark ages begin? Jobs said the same regarding desktop
computing in 1996. I think the web was obviously overlooked in his remark, but
he was quite accurate regarding the desktop per se.

------
Bud
Microsoft just got called out by Steve Ballmer, of all people, for using "run
rate" instead of real sales numbers.

I'd personally be taking any claims like this with a grain of salt.

------
auggierose
I don't understand the whole "I want to use my tablet as a laptop" craze and
vice versa.

I use my Macbook Pro for laptop stuff, and my iPad Pro for reading books and
PDFs and drawing diagrams etc. Why would I want to merge both devices into
one?

~~~
paulojreis
I wouldn't want such thing. I like focused products. But the geek opinion-
makers in the web like buzzwords such as "convergence" and "hybrids". It seems
relevant, because opinion-makers talk about it, but - at least to me - the
relevance to real-world users still has to be proven.

------
johnchristopher
Interesting first comment:

>

1010data is a cloud services data insight company. Yahoo Finance, The
International Business Times, and Forbes are all reporting their numbers. It's
based on looking at online sales from the top 100 online retailers and
extrapolating sales from that data.

1010data is not fly by night. They've been around since 2000 and most of their
stuff is designed to provide insight to retailers when it comes to what they
need to sell. This is an internal industry report, not something generally
released to the public. WinBeta got their hands on it, but it's not a shocker.
The iPad has not been doing well. While the entire tablet segment has been
stagnant, the iPad has been hardest hit. The growth segment in the market has
been in higher cost productivity designs that can do more.

This kind of market data has been around for over a year. It tells you why
we're seeing all these "me too" Surface products. It's not just Surface, it's
2-in-1s that are attracting people. Why did Apple make an iPad Pro? Because
this is where tablets are going. Few need a consumption only tablet when they
can have a device that works for that AND also can get work done.

Either IDC or Gartner is showing that Microsoft is closing in on 20% of tablet
share and is expected to pass the iPad in the next few years. This is not just
Surface but the Windows tablets. They are the largest growth segment in
tablets. Microsoft has gone from 0% to over 10% in only about 2 years.

So for those that wonder about UWP and apps for phones - they are coming
because of these 2-in-1s. This is why Satya Nadella has asked for some
patience. This 1010data info is for retail industry and it is how many (like
Best Buy) will determine what to stock, what to push, etc.

In other words, the Microsoft Surface is the IT tablet for right now.
Microsoft has managed to create a major brand that is looked at as a quality
one while also using it as a halo brand that can filter down to other OEMs.

Do not be surprised if we find out by this time next year that Windows tablets
overall have surpassed the iPad. And as the Surface surges and UWP becomes
more viable, the opportunity of have a Surface convergence device that can be
a phone emerges as an interesting concept to reboot the idea of what Windows
is on mobile.

Everyone is so focused on right now where Android seems insurmountable and
Apple is strong. Both will continue to be viable for a long time, but
Microsoft is putting together an alternative narrative that allows consumption
and production on single devices and on a single OS. We're only at the
beginning of the UWP salvo.

The report is solid, but limited. Brick and mortar retailers aren't counted
here - and that includes Apple Stores. Of course, physical Microsoft Stores
are not counted either, but they are a much smaller group.

Did overall Surface sales trump the iPad? Likely not. But there's a reason why
Apple was compelled to make the iPad Pro. The Surface is a REAL danger to
them. For them to mock it and then backtrack when it has succeeded tells you
all you need to know.

And the Surface is becoming the key to UWP. If it remains a hot item, it
remains an attractive target for developers.

