Microsoft shows off healthy Surface sales ahead of rumored Surface PC launch

When Microsoft first launched its Surface range of tablets four years ago, sales were pretty weak, with stories of units gathering dust in warehouses – but the picture couldn’t be more different now, with the latest sales figures showing the hybrid going from strength to strength.

Microsoft just revealed its latest fiscal report for Q1 of financial year 2017, and this showed that Surface sales increased by 38% in the quarter compared to the same period last year. Microsoft took $926 million (around £760 million, AU$1.2 billion) in revenue from the 2-in-1 devices compared to $672 million (around £550 million, AU$880 million) the previous year.

That’s almost a billion dollars in a quarter which is not too shabby indeed, and the company said that boosted sales of its newest offerings, the Surface Bookand Surface Pro 4, were behind the increase in revenue.

Real driving force 

We suspect that it’s the Surface Pro 4 which is really driving things forward, though, at least if statistics we saw from AdDuplex back in the summer are anything to go by.

Those stats broke down the relative market share of all the Surface devices out there, and they showed that the Surface Pro 3 and 4 were the most popular models accounting for 33% and 31% of all Surface devices in use – whereas the Surface Book languished on 3.6%.

Although as we noted at the time, that doesn’t necessarily mean the Surface Book has been anything of a flop – it could just be a reflection of the device being a niche product (due to its cost) with a far more limited production run than the SP4.

In the broader picture, it’s no surprise to see Surface sales rising given that most analysts have been predicting big success for 2-in-1s going forward, very much against the prevailing winds of the PC industry, which is currently in the doldrums.

Although it looks like that won’t stop Microsoft launching a Surface PC, or at least this is strongly rumored to be happening at a press event next week, where we expect to see the revelation of an all-in-one machine complete with Surface-branded peripherals (keyboard and mouse).