It’s been said time and time again. If you’re not Apple, the tablet market is a hard one to crack. Microsoft has found this out the hard way, with CEO Steve Ballmer stating yesterday that the company built too many of its Surface tablets and that it expected customer demand to have been higher.
“We built a few more devices than we could sell,” said Ballmer during an internal team meeting. Because of this, he says, the company was forced to make a 30% price cut worldwide on its Surface line in order to sell the rest of its stock.
It’s not just its Surface tablets that are disappointing Microsoft, however, the company wants to see more sales in its other WIndows devices like PCs and phones. “We’re not selling as many Windows devices as we want to.” Ballmer admitted.
While we already knew that the Surface wasn’t doing too hot, at least this shows that Microsoft knows it has to improve. The company says its currently working on a new line of Surface tablets that will feature slightly updated specs. We’ll have to wait and see if Microsoft is able to convince customers to actually buy it.
Ironically, the company’s current marketing strategy is to show customers how much better the Surface is than the iPad.
