14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft officially introduced the Surface Pro approximately ten days ago, but the company is still struggling to deal with a nationwide shortage affecting the 128 GB model.
Even though the interest seems to be very high, Salman Chaudry, product manager for mobile computing at analyst firm Context World, said that the Surface Pro is highly unlikely to generate so much buzz in the next half-year, so sales won’t be increased too much on the short term.
“I do not really see a long lifespan for Surface hardware, based on our channel analysis. I think we can assume [that] in the next six months, the Surface will come and go with not much trace of an impact. It was marketing for the point of selling Windows 8, but there has not been huge penetration and we see that OEMs are taking the role as hardware manufacturers,” he said, according to ChannelNomics.
The Surface Pro is currently available in the United States and Canada exclusively, but the company has already confirmed that international availability would be announced soon.
The United Kingdom is very likely to be one of the possible destinations for the tablet, as Microsoft is already selling the RT version of the device in the country.
“It is a business tablet which is not going [to be sold] through a business strategy – it is suicide,” the analyst pointed out.
As far as Microsoft goes, demand for the Surface Pro is “amazing,” as all stores across the United States ran out of tablets soon after its launch on February 9.
The company is still trying to cope with the high demand for the device, as the 128 GB version is still unavailable in the United States. A pre-order program is, however, available in the country, while Microsoft promised that it would start shipping tablets in early March.