Canalys analyst says Surface makes no sense for Microsoft

Oct 13, 2018 06:19 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft seems to be truly committed to hardware, and the recent unveiling of Surface Pro 6, Surface Studio 2, Surface Laptop 2, and Surface Headphones are the living proof that the software giant has absolutely no intention to give up on this market anytime soon.

But if you’re asking Steve Brazier, CEO at Canalys, Microsoft is very likely to have different plans for the future, and the Surface brand isn’t included.

Brazier believes that investing in Surface hardware “doesn’t make sense” for Microsoft, so he thinks that sooner or later, the Redmond-based software giant would discontinue these products. And it’ll happen rather sooner than later, he says, as he stands by his prediction of an announcement in this regard coming in 2019.

Microsoft, a top 5 PC brand

Paradoxically, Microsoft has already announced Surface products coming in 2019, like the next-generation Surface Hub, and Surface chief Panos Panay recently said that the company is very committed to inventing new product categories that would help expand the brand.

And yet, the analyst said at the Canalys Channels Forum 2018 that Microsoft should focus on the areas that bring home the bacon, so he believes that at one point, CEO Satya Nadella himself would figure this out and kill off Surface.

“It would be much more sensible for Microsoft to stop spending money on Surface and focus on its cloud and application business where it's doing really well. I think [Satya Nadella] will get to that conclusion. It may need them to have a choppy quarter or two before he pulls the plug,” he was quoted as saying by The Reg.

While Microsoft hasn’t commented on this forecast, it’s pretty clear that at least in the short term, the software giant doesn’t want to give up on hardware. Furthermore, Surface sales are continuously growing, and Microsoft has recently entered the top 5 PC brands in the US, just after rival Apple.