Microsoft’s Craig Mundie, who is the company’s chief research and strategy officer, spoke at the company’s TechForum recently. He admitted that the Surface device was in response to Apple. In fact, Microsoft wanted a “very high quality physical device” that would compete with Apple.
When asked about the company’s investment in the Surface device and if it was a good measure to alienate OEMs by creating the company’s own device, Mundie responded by saying that it was absolutely worth it. “One of the big challenges that the company faced in the last couple of years was just the question of, would there be a very high quality physical device that would go up against Apple? We set out to prove with Surface that you can do that. I think that certainly people have acknowledged that,” Microsoft’s Craig Mundie stated. With the launch of the Surface RT and Surface Pro, Microsoft has proven that it can create a great device without the need of OEM assistance. However, being able to sell the device and create software to work well on that device are two different things. With recent issues of the Surface Pro being out of stock, Microsoft may have lost its chance to hit the mark or perhaps Microsoft knew all along that the Surface would be a hit and the company was simply creating anticipation. “It turns out it’s expensive to build one of these premium grade products. You had to be willing to front the money to make that work. We were willing to do that, so we could build one of these things and I think we feel very good about that,” Mundie added.
