What’s Next for Surface? (Premium)

Today, Microsoft announced new Surface Laptop and Pro models that are additive instead of upgrades for existing devices. Many had assumed that these smaller new models, with lower-end Snapdragon X processors, would be marketed as Surface Go PCs, but that’s not the case. I think I know why–Microsoft isn’t saying–but whatever the reason, there’s been yet another subtle strategy shift for Surface. What does this mean for the future of this product family?

? Go, going, gone

While Microsoft has sold Surface Go products through its Surface for Business store–like the Surface Laptop Go 3 and Surface Go 4–these were always low-end PCs with uninspiring performance that I think undermined the Surface brand. Granted, the Surface strategy has shifted over the years, repeatedly, but sticking to a premium-only model has always made the most sense to me. In this way, the products can compete more directly with Apple–or, at the least, provide a reasonable Windows-based alternative to MacBook–while not undercutting Microsoft’s PC maker partners and the important revenue they still deliver.

The trick, of course, is delivering Surface PCs that are lower-end but not cheap, products that deliver on the value proposition of Surface but at a lower price point. And it is here, I think, that the new Surface Laptop and Pro models succeed and the Go product did not. How they got there is interesting. There’s no Surface Connect port, not a first, but also long overdue. There’s no Thunderbolt 4, just USB-C 3.x. Smaller screens, of course, and 45-watt power adapters (like the Go products). The new Pro comes with a keyboard, which I think is a first, and it’s lie-flat only, without the magnet-based second typing position all other Surface keyboard covers have offered (including with Go).

These feel like reasonable trade-offs to me, and it’s hard to argue with the starting prices: $799 for Surface Pro, 12-inch and $899 for Surface Laptop, 13-inch. And the smaller sizes, combined with the incredible battery life and efficiency improvements you get with Snapdragon, should appeal to those who value portability above all else. I’ve not used a PC with these processors, but I assume the performance will be terrific, especially compared to the crap Intel processors Surface has used with the Go line.

? Oh, Snap

The new Surface products point to the future of Surface, just as they point to the future of portable PCs: They’re based on Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors, not Intel- or AMD-based x86 processors. This isn’t coincidental, and while I’m sure we’ll see a smattering of x86 Surface PCs in the future, that will be mostly show for Microsoft’s long-time processor partners. The future of Windows, on laptops, most definitely, is Arm, not x86.

We can look at Microsoft’s positioning here in a few different ways.

First, the company has long sought to position Surface as a leader of sorts. That’s never materialized from a unit sales perspective–Surface’s negative impact on Microsoft’s bottom line is now hidden inside a “Windows OEM and Devices” group within its More Personal Computing business unit–but there are other forms of leadership. In the past, it tried to influence PC makers to adopt technologies and form factors that it considered key for future growth, but not it simply makes them itself and hopes these designs inspire the rest of the industry. Surface Pro is still it’s most successful example in that regard.

It may not seem like it, but AMD and Intel are in some ways running scared when it comes to Snapdragon X, and you can see how that’s so in their latest generation chipsets, which were rushed to market so that Qualcomm wouldn’t have Copilot+ PC to itself. Here, Intel stumbled the hardest, and its one-off “Lunar Lake” chips stand as a testament to its desperation. But even AMD suffers from some of the same issues as Intel, thanks to the creaky x86 architecture: These chips perform great on power, and AMD has incredible graphics capabilities, but each throttles performance significantly–Intel by up to 45 percent and AMD by up to 30 percent–on battery power to try and keep up with Snapdragon’s battery life. Neither succeeds, and the lesson here is that performance per watt matters.

There’s also some confusion about where Qualcomm is at in building out the ecosystem for Arm-based PCs. The first wave of this push, seen in last May/June’s Copilot+ PC launch, was about premium consumer laptops and by the end of last summer, Snapdragon X-based PCs accounted for roughly 10 percent of all Windows laptops sold in the U.S. with a price of $800 or more. The second wave was about bringing Snapdragon X to lower priced PCs, and by the start of 2025, Snapdragon X-based PCs accounted for almost 10 percent of all Windows laptops sold in the U.S., and Western Europe with a price of $600 or more. The third wave is about the enterprise. And that’s why these new Surface PCs will be sold to businesses as well. Windows 11 on Arm and Snapdragon X are ready for businesses.

Here are some numbers. Thanks to 300 percent growth in native Arm apps this past year, Microsoft’s telemetry shows that 93 percent of all apps run on Snapdragon-based laptops are now native, and 5 percent are handled ably by Microsoft’s Prism emulator. 96 percent of the top 100 apps globally are native on Arm now. And the security, data protection, remote access, IT management, and VDI tools that businesses rely on are, or will soon be, already native on Arm. The final hurdle there is security apps with kernel drivers. There’s a similar story with hardware: 8500 Wi-Fi printers just work on Snapdragon and over 1000 USB printers with advanced features are natively supported, for example.

The fourth wave starts in September. That’s when Qualcomm will introduce its second generation Snapdragon X processors, which are rumored to have dramatically better GPUs. Which they’ll need, since Nvidia is likewise rumored to be coming to this market soon, perhaps with MediaTek.

Not all PCs will be Arm-based, of course. But increasingly x86-based systems will be used solely for what I’ll call legacy or esoteric workloads and lower-volume parts of the market, like desktop towers and build-your-own PCs. The volume part of this market is aligned very nicely with the unique strengths of Snapdragon X.

? Less is more

After years of ups and downs, Surface finds itself in a similar position as Windows. Engineering and financial resources have been rerouted to other parts of the company, and the teams that are left have to make do with less. This is likely why Panos Panay left Microsoft in late 2023: He simply wasn’t interested in presiding over this decline. But there’s something interesting that can happen when you’re forced to rein in the spending. You focus. And while success isn’t guaranteed, a smaller, more focused Surface family of products is very interesting to me.

Today, Surface has just two main product lines, Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. This makes sense: Pro is its one form factor innovation and you gotta have a laptop. But now each is available in various sizes–12 and 13-inch for Surface Pro and 13-, 13.8- and 15-inch for Surface Laptop–and spanning a nice range of price points and configurations. Yes, there are Intel versions in there, for business, but most new devices are Snapdragon/Arm now.

Even for consumers, Surface still has other PCs, too–Surface Studio 2, Surface Laptop Studio, and Surface Laptop Go 3–but they are all out of date and unlikely to be updated. Nor do they need to be: Surface Pro and Surface Laptop cover the majority of use cases in personal and professional productivity. This is the right focus for Surface. I love this positioning. I hope Microsoft doesn’t get stupid and try to diversify further. If anything, it should simply kill off the x86 products entirely.

? And that’s the way it is

We’ll see what happens going forward. But for now, at least, the Surface family of consumer products is an interesting peek at Microsoft’s view of the PC market as it is today and will likely remain for years to come. And that market is about portability, performance, efficiency, and reliability, not to mention AI workloads that are shifting increasingly from CPU/GPU to NPU. If this reads like Qualcomm’s marketing materials, that’s on purpose. These two companies are aligned and have a shared vision for the PC. And you can see that vision made real in Surface.