Joe Belfiore finally stops the vague waffle

<blockquote><a href="#205856"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>According to Gartner there were approx. 1 billion smart phones sold in 2014, why would you think a high end, differentiated offering by Microsoft that fulfilled a well targeted niche could not grab 0.1% of that market, 1,000,000 units? </p><p>You think there could be no synergy potential between such a Surface Phone and the rest of the Surface line, or just existing PC's generally? Why would they be just an entire market to themselves in the short term? </p><p>But yes, of course the point of such devices, if&nbsp;shipped, would have to go beyond that, just as Google is not selling Chromebooks to K12 as an end goal. It would have to be that they think offering it can be a path back to owning something in mobile in the intermediate and longer term. The end goal is still to fight in the base market. You see it with Surface Laptop for example, after they meandered over several years with more niche products. All companies are this way. If they succeed at the edge of the market, or in new areas, they will eventually try to move to the center, or on old incumbents to take big profits. </p><p>BTW, I was referring to AAPL in my statement above, not MSFT. Microsoft customers were never "fastidious". </p>

<blockquote><a href="#205877"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p>The raw number thing came from hrIngrv, I am just debating the $1 billion market benchmark he referenced. Sure Apple was successful in PCs earlier on, and maybe it's not accurate to say they were an upstart latter on when things were rough for them. Maybe, underdog.</p>

<blockquote><a href="#205881"><em>In reply to hrlngrv:</em></a></blockquote><p>Notice&nbsp;that I used 2014 Gartner numbers. This is 2017, the year Microsoft would ship the imaginary device is further off still, there would be a very significant number more than 1 billion devices sold that year. We are doing back of the envelope here, roughly speaking. So, to bring up retail margins is kinda getting a bit more detailed than where we were. But OK then, lets say Microsoft would take a significant discount to get net revenue, do you believe they could not do 0.15%, 0.2%, even 0.5% of the then, smartphone market, you think this is beyond the scope of a company with the heft and brand of Microsoft? Frankly it is very easy to see them blowing by that number. Easy. The market is so large, the company has so many resources. </p><p>Next you pull up a Thurrott link for devices that were failing. If you already decided its gonna fail, why would you do it. Why would you imagine failure as your base case if you are thinking of building new devices? This is like showing a link for Surface RT write offs just before they launched Surface Pro. </p><p>Now obviously if someone simply put HP X3 in new skin and called it Surface future device (please note I did not write,&nbsp;Surface future phone), Nadella would surely axe that. I mean, you don't trust his chopping&nbsp;propensity yet?&nbsp;The point is that they would build things that were in&nbsp; new niche(s) they try to create based on capabilities that they did not have when X3 was built, just as they did for 2/1 tablets.Things like Windows ARM, Andromeda, CShell, Redstone #44, whatever folding things the hw team can dream up, or HoloLens, WMR based, etc. This is not X3, its not Windows Mobile, Its not anything you or I have seen before. Making these it will not work comparisons to things that failed is the same, again, as taking Surface RT after it failed, and saying they will never build a successful Surface. Apples &amp; Oranges.</p><p>Now,&nbsp;to the point of aspirational devices: the sort of devices I am thinking of are not just "phones" they would be multifunctional in some way, and therefore, even if we use your framework, there is no reason why existing tablets, existing VR sets, existing whatever they are derivatives of, cannot function as the low end devices you are thinking about. Same way Surface Studio is a strange beast hybrid of tablet/desktop/digitizer. </p><p><br></p>