Microsoft plans to sell ‘a few million’ Surface PCs in the coming year
Summary: With Surface and now Perceptive Pixel, is Microsoft gearing up for total hardware domination? — Follow @maryjofoley — Since Microsoft unveiled its first Microsoft-branded PCs, the Microsoft Surfaces in late June …
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's late-June unveiling of its first self-branded PCs has escalated quickly: within weeks the company has confirmed both a volume target of 'a few million' Surface units for the coming year and the Perceptive Pixel acquisition, adding large-format touch displays to the hardware portfolio. The pickup was broad — The Verge, The Register, The Next Web and WinBeta all carried the story on or about July 10, 2012 — reflecting how unusual it is for a Windows licensor to ship its own machines.
The stakes are framed by what else Microsoft said this week: Ballmer insists Surface is merely a 'design point' showing PC makers what is possible, and the company asserts it is not abandoning its longtime manufacturing partners. That reassurance sits awkwardly next to a multi-million-unit sales plan, and comes as Microsoft's $6.3 billion aQuantive display-ad bet from 2007 is being written down — making hardware a more visible pillar of the strategy than it has been in years.
First-order effects
- Windows OEM partners now compete directly with their own platform vendor in tablets, whatever the 'design point' framing suggests, since Microsoft plans to sell millions of Surfaces itself rather than only demo them.
- A few-million-unit commitment makes Microsoft a first-party buyer of ARM and Intel silicon and touch/display components at meaningful scale, starting with its first year of shipments.
Second-order effects
- PC makers are pushed to respond on price and industrial design rather than rely on Windows access alone, because a reference design explicitly invites them to match or beat Surface's execution.
- The Perceptive Pixel deal opens a second hardware front in large-screen collaborative displays, extending the Surface playbook from consumer tablets into enterprise rooms and vertical markets.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Microsoft's model shifts from licensing software to partners toward selling integrated devices, forcing a renegotiation of partner economics in every category it enters — with the open question being whether OEMs treat Surface as catalyst or competitor.
The trend: Microsoft is testing the transition from pure software licensor to vertically integrated device maker, with Surface volume targets and the Perceptive Pixel acquisition as the earliest data points.