14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is trying to become a more active player in the hardware industry and the growing family of Surface devices is the living proof.
Of course, this isn’t good news for the other manufacturers already in the market, but the company may actually change the traditional partnership model and thus hurt the entire PC industry.
This is the opinion of Joachim Kempin, a former senior vice president of Windows Sales who left the company in 2003, according to an interview with IGN.
Kempin believes that Microsoft is trying to build its own hardware and release new products that may in the end compete with the ones released by its partners.
“It’s what they’re doing to the PC manufacturers. When they announced Surface, the tablet, and the upcoming notebook, they’re trying to go their own way again. They’re abandoning the partnership model which has worked for the last 20, 30 years and whoever the partners are they are not happy about it. I personally think it’s a mistake, but Ballmer doesn’t think so and he runs the company.”
And Kempin is not the only one who believes that Microsoft’s new strategy may affect the hardware industry.
Acer CEO JT Wang said in an interview back in October that Microsoft is actually planning to kill the ecosystem with its own products. The Surface is only the beginning, Wang said.
“They are doing something to kill the whole ecosystem,” Wang said. “They have all this cash. They could kill everybody,” he added explaining that Microsoft’s $63 billion (€48 billion) in cash allows the company to release plenty of other products.
Sources familiar with the matter suggest that Microsoft is working on expanding the Surface product range with some new devices, including a smaller tablet specifically designed for gaming purposes.
Of course, Microsoft refuses to comment on these rumors, but a new Surface device is expected to hit the shelves this year.