In a recent Q&A Session, Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer said that building a device like Surface is really important for the PC ecosystem and the device is a real business, even though it might not be huge in the volumes.
Even though Microsoft’s Surface tablet has received mixed reviews across the world, the company is not giving up its hope on the device. Steve Ballmer’s recent interview clearly says so. Steve Ballmer’s answer to the question about the company taking the right path on Surface, was pretty straight forward:
Surface is a real business. In an environment in which there’s 350 million PCs sold, I don’t think Surface is going to dominate volume, but it’s a real business.
There is also an interesting part in the interview, which indeed reveals the company is been concentrating on the Surface tablet, to make their own Tablet with Push Pen computing devices, which was not possible with the OEMs.
Take pen computing [the use of a stylus on a tablet]: I think it’s fair to say we’ve been talking about pen computing for years, but it was hard to do that with OEMs who were not equally incentivized. Now we’re trying to lead a little bit with Surface Pro.
This is not all. The interview also saw some interesting things that Ballmer said about the way the company executed its product lines. Which we think its true:
I would simply say we’re about defining the future of productivity, entertainment, and communication—in the new world [where] software is going to have to come in kind of an integrated form. Or at least a well-designed form that includes cloud services and devices.
The entire interview is up for your reading at the MIT Technology Review website. And I personally think that the interview is pretty important, revealing some of the mistakes and the future plans of Microsoft.