First, the data. Revenue for the tablet-laptop hybrid was $1.1 billion, up 24 percent year to year, "driven by Surface Pro 3 and accessories," Microsoft said in its earnings statement this week.
Chief financial officer Amy Hood commented on this during the earnings conference call. "Strong interest in Surface Pro 3 helped to drive record revenue as well as improved gross margins. Surface Pro 3 volumes are pacing over three times the rate of what we saw for Surface Pro 2," Hood said.
Later in the call, CEO Satya Nadella, chimed in, responding to an analyst's query. He spoke about how it is driving demand in the 2-in-1 (aka hybrid tablet-laptop) category for all participants.
But without hard sales numbers it's not easy to say how successful (or not) the Surface Pro 3 tablet is. (In December, a Pacific Crest analyst estimated sales during the quarter of 1.275 million units with an average selling price of $863.)
So, I asked the resident tablet expert at market researcher
"It definitely qualifies as a success if you look at their efforts in the tablet market," she said. "We're not looking at iPad volumes certainly but for a company that started out two years ago without having made a PC and trying to do it on a platform that is not the dominant platform in the tablet market, it's a success."
So, let's call it a qualified success. It's not the 21.4 million iPads
Whether Microsoft is actually making money on Surface is, needless to say, also a pertinent question. The answer may be a qualified no -- at least according to one market analyst.
A Microsoft representative declined to comment.
