Ballmer finally admits Microsoft having problems selling Surface and Windows 8

In a report from The Verge Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer finally admits during an internal town hall event earlier this week that:

“We built a few more devices than we could sell”

Well done Captain Obvious !!!  But wait…. There’s more.  Stevie B also apparently had another epiphany, cause he also said:

“We’re not selling as many Windows devices as we want to”

Wow……  (sarcastic frown, head shaking)

With insights as bad and late as that, is it any wonder that Microsoft had to take an unexpected $900 million charge for its inventory of unsold Surface tablets ?  An analyst quoted in the story said:

“That’s the biggest miss we’ve ever seen from Microsoft, the biggest that I could remember…”  “It looks like everything was weak….”

That news sent it’s share price down 10% by the next morning, losing $30 billion in value.  This story goes on to be thoroughly baffled, as Ballmer seems to be, at why the Surface is failing so badly.  Another story speculates that the lack of distribution is what is killing the Surface.  One begins to wonder how much more clueless Microsoft and Microsoft reporters can get.

It’s about the User eXperience

Look.  It’s not the hardware – although the lack of quality in both the Surface RT and Pro, and the crappy performance in the RT didn’t help.  Then lying in comparisons with iPad about storage and display size.

It’s not the lack of distribution – Anyone can go into a Microsoft Store and put their hands on the Surface.  Perhaps many did try it out and then walked over to the Apple store and bought an iPad.

It’s the User eXperience (UX) !!!!  Something Microsoft has never truly gotten.  And not just the OS’s UX – The ENTIRE UX end to end.  The experience from stores to purchase to hardware to OS to apps to online content and more.  Just the embarrassingly awful touch UX of the Surface and Windows 8 and Office 2013, proves that they still don’t get it.  And when you add it all up, it equals EPIC Fail !!!!