Microsoft Surface Book and Surface Pro 4 demands shift to 2016
With postponed orders and shortage in supply of Intel's Skylake processors, the demand paradigm of Microsoft’s tablet-laptop hybrids will shift to Q1 2016
The holiday season is by far one of the most profitable for any company, and if you’re Microsoft who’s recently unveiled the Surface Pro 4 tablet and the Surface Book laptop, you probably were upbeat about cashing in on the festive season demand spike for gadgets. Unfortunately, at present, the latest Surface devices have been plagued with supply chain problems, led by the shortage in supply of Intel’s Skylake chipsets. This will have led to much diminished shipment numbers for Microsoft in Q4 2015, in concern with the two Surface devices – headliners of Microsoft’s present gadget arsenal.
To speed up the process, Microsoft is using Pegatron’s services, and with improving numbers of deliverable devices in Microsoft’s inventory, a unique post-holiday demand spike is expected to take place. Notably, most companies face a lull after the holiday season is over, with slow-moving numbers and lack of momentum in the market. In such market environment, Microsoft is expected to ship 100,000 units of the Surface Book, and 200,000 units of the Surface Pro 4, in Q1 2016, according to word from sources in the upper echelons of the supply chain.
Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see if the initial delay works in favour of Microsoft, which it seems like it might. For one, the holiday market is extremely competitive, beyond which most companies face a lull, and it is there that Microsoft will execute most of its shipments, giving its numbers a major boost.
The new Surface devices have come in the light of Microsoft giving its operating system, Windows 10, a major push across multiple devices. The Microsoft Surface Pro 4 is a flagship tablet that faces direct competition from Apple’s iPad Pro, and Google’s Pixel C. Powered by 6th generation Intel Core m3, i5 and i7 processors, it also houses 4GB of RAM, and 128GB, 256GB and 512GB of storage. Its display is 12.3 inches in size, with a rather unusual resolution of 2736×1824 pixels. The tablet-notebook hybrid Surface Book is powered by 6th generation Core i5 and i7 processors, 8GB/16GB of RAM, 128GB to 1TB of storage, a 13.5-inch display with a resolution of 3000×2000 pixels, and optional 1GB of NVIDIA GDDR5 graphics chip.