The Surface Book grows in the “laplets” product category

May 13, 2016 07:57 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in making the Surface successful after the first RT model failed to stir up interest, and it turns out that all these efforts are already paying off.

Although it’s not a direct competitor to the iPad, the Surface Book has experienced a huge growth in sales and has moved considerably closer to Apple’s tablet in terms of sold units.

And a report by CW revealing an unpublished research from 1010data reveals that the iPad is currently at 32.5 percent market share in the so-called “laplets” category (2-in-1 PCs), but the Surface Book is closing on the gap by growing 9 percent to a personal best of 25 percent. If the same trend is maintained and the iPad keeps declining while the Surface grows, a change of places could take place as soon as the next month.

The research reportedly shows that tablet sales are dropping because customers are no longer interested in such devices. 2-in-1 devices that can double as a laptop and tablet are more popular these days and Windows provides a significant advantage in this regard.

New Surface Book on its way

And while the current Surface Book model is already gaining ground, a second generation is in the works behind the closed doors at Microsoft, with the official unveiling planned for early 2017.

There were some rumors recently that Microsoft might be planning to take the wraps off the Surface Book as soon as the next month, but such a scenario is very unlikely given the fact that the original model was introduced less than a year ago.

The spring 2017 release date makes much more sense given the fact that Microsoft is projected to finalize work on the Windows 10 Redstone update at about the same time, so the new Surface Book could launch with this OS from the very beginning. There are certainly lots of scarce details right now, so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens.