Microsoft Increases Production and Expands Retail Distribution for Microsoft Surface With Windows RT
Makes Surface available at additional retailers, extends successful Microsoft holiday stores into new year. — Microsoft Corp. today announced plans to make Microsoft Surface available …
Context & Ripple Effects
When Microsoft unveiled Surface as its first in-house PC family in June 2012, it broke its long-standing pattern of leaving hardware to OEM partners — and it sold the device only through its own stores and website. That exclusivity was itself a statement: Microsoft had spent years building a retail footprint, starting with the store openings in Denver and San Diego back in 2010, explicitly chasing the Apple playbook.
Today's move closes that loop. By raising production and pushing Surface with Windows RT into third-party retailers while keeping the holiday pop-up stores running into the new year, Microsoft is signaling that demand justified scale — and that it no longer needs total channel control to sell its own hardware. The pickup across Reuters, Bloomberg, ZDNet, CNET and the Guardian shows how closely the channel question is being watched.
First-order effects
- Third-party retailers gain a Microsoft-branded tablet on their shelves for the first time, giving them a marquee Windows device heading into the post-holiday quarter.
- Microsoft's own-store-only launch window for Surface ends, converting a controlled showcase product into a volume-distributed one.
Second-order effects
- Windows PC makers who license the OS now face their supplier competing for the same shelf space at the same retailers — the channel-conflict tension baked into the Surface decision becomes physical and visible.
- Retailers' tablet assortments shift the bargaining mix between Microsoft, its OEM partners, and the stores deciding which Windows devices get floor space.
Third-order effects
- If Surface sells through open retail, Microsoft's identity tilts further from pure software licensor toward an integrated hardware-plus-retail company on the Apple model — a structural change for every OEM that depends on Windows.
- The move tests whether first-party hardware can expand a platform's reach without fracturing the partner ecosystem that made Windows ubiquitous in the first place.
The trend: Platform owners are increasingly going vertical — building their own hardware, their own stores, and then scaling both through conventional retail once demand is proven.