In the midst of an aggressive ad campaign that seeks to show how Surface tablets can replace laptops, Microsoft is reminding those who fear the series will soon meet its demise that it's fully behind driving the laplets into the future.
To allay fears that Microsoft may be planning to ramp down production of the Surface series, Brian Hall, general manager of Surface, released a blurb in a blog about his company's commitment to businesses and the Windows tablets.
Microsoft understands that businesses need clarity on its commitment to the Surface Pro 3 in order to make a determination on whether or not to invest in the tablet, but the tech firms holds tight to its road map to maximize its competitiveness, according to Hall.
"We have kept our road map plans close to the vest, as we needed to properly land new Surface products in a competitive market," states Hall. "But we've always said that we have a road map of products. Of course we'll have to wait and see about what those products may look like or when they might come to markets."
On the very day Hall reaffirmed Microsoft's commitment to the Surface series, a new rumor emerged with statements from alleged supply chain insiders who asserted that Microsoft was ramping down it's production of Surface Pro 3 tablets. The purported insiders alleged that Microsoft didn't have enough distribution partners to continue moving the volume of tablets it was producing.
There was a renewed doubt about the Surface series' longevity when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella published the company's new manifesto in a lengthy internal memo this summer. The information-laden memo was skewed several different ways, until Nadella directed the focus to the memo's "mobile first, cloud first" section and other Microsoft heads drove that message home at the company's Worldwide Partner's Conference shortly after.
The focus in the Windows 10 reveal on mobile devices, tablets in particular, also suggest that Microsoft is far from ditching the Surface series. The company saw shipments of its enterprise tablet grow by approximately 33 percent in 2013, despite sluggish sales as a whole.
"We believe a strength of the Microsoft platform for enterprise is the rich ecosystem of hardware and applications developed by our partners, the community at large, and some of our own teams at Microsoft," says Nadella. "In particular with Microsoft Surface Pro 3 we are now offering an enterprise-class device that can deliver great end-user productivity. Microsoft is putting its full and sustained support behind the ongoing Surface program as one of a number of great hardware choices for businesses large and small."
