Surface is a Billion Dollar Winner for Microsoft
Yesterday, when Microsoft published its earnings results for the second quarter of 2014 (which is Q4 on the calendar year), it was coming off of one of the most successful days in the company’s recent history, having announced a slew of exciting features for Windows 10 and the very interesting Hololens device. The company’s developer conference, Build, sold out within an hour the next day – so Microsoft was riding high. And, as it turns out, they’ve finally scored some wins with the Surface line, having transformed what was a frequent sales loser into its latest billion dollar business.
In April of last year, Microsoft had yet to introduce the Surface Pro 3 – arguably the company’s biggest hardware success since the Xbox. That same month, the company had announced that the Surface was costing more money than it was pulling in. And that was an improvement – about a year earlier, Microsoft had to make a $900 million write-down on unsold Surface RT and Surface Pro units. Together, those two performances made the Surface seem like a bad idea from the start. But that all changed last summer when the Surface Pro 3 hit the scene.
Now, reports Neowin, Microsoft has earned over a billion dollars from the Surface Pro 3 – specifically $1.1 billion, a 24 percent spike from previous Surface line performance. In short, the Surface Pro 3 is the device that helped Microsoft figure out the right combination of features and quality to truly release a desirable laptop replacement. The Surface Pro 4 is rumored to be on the way, and it may end up being announced at the upcoming Build conference. If not, we’ll almost certainly see it by this coming summer, following in line with the most recent Surface announcement. With Windows 10 gathering great buzz, the Surface Pro 4 might even outperform the current Surface star.