Peering beneath Microsoft’s Surface

Microsoft surprised a lot of people, including me, with a breathtaking new tablet called the ‘Surface’. Built from Magnesium, coming in at a mere 9.3 mm in thickness you cannot but be awestruck at the awesome this tablet exudes.

Microsoft showed off this 10.1-inch Full HD tablet and said that it will feature both ARM and Intel based processors. Pricing should start around US$499, Microsoft only said is ‘comparable to ARM based tablets’ when announcing the pricing and will start at 32Gb storage.

What is so amazing about this is that Microsoft, with a single blow, will take a significant market segment from the company’s OEMs. According to the IDC, OEMs will ship around 375-million PCs next year. Microsoft seems to realize that its OEMs do not have the capacity to build a real iPad killer, so it jumped in and seriously killed it.

When this tablet starts to ship around September/October, Microsoft will grab the entire Windows tablet market. Android will suffer as Windows will offer a better experience (and kudos on design) where Android dragged so far. Yes Android might still hold on to that sub US$299 market that nobody seems to be interested in.

The real question is will Microsoft be able to grab significant share from Apple, which to date controls about 60% of the Tablet market. With this amazing tablet, and it’s nothing sort of amazing, it could very well do it.

With the new multi touch keyboard cover, which looks like the cool smart cover Apple released for the iPad a year ago, but that is actually smart will turn any Surface tablet into a fully-fledged laptop. With the super thin kickstand you can turn this into your everyday work laptop; and when you’re done pick it up and leave.

What they didn’t mention is battery life. With such an intelligent design Microsoft should have thought of at least 10 hours battery life. Anything less is just void of reason.

Whatever your bias is, Microsoft just pulled a fast one and changed everything we thought was possible. The iPad re-invented the Tablet. Microsoft just re-invented the PC. The iPad brought us into a post-PC world, and Microsoft just stopped that process by designing a whole new PC.

It is undeniable that Windows 8 will now be a raving success, because Microsoft just put their backs into it. What baffles me is how they kept this a secret for so long?