Surface Book seen as a device that could impact OEM sales

Oct 13, 2015 09:41 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft launched several new devices last week, including what it calls “the ultimate laptop,” and some OEMs are concerned that, with so many investments in the hardware industry, the Redmond-based software giant could also become their rival for the same category of buyers.

And truth is, with so many devices on the market, Microsoft is becoming a much more important hardware company, and the Surface Book is living proof of its commitment to the premium device business.

Acer is one of the companies whose sales might be impacted by the arrival of new Microsoft devices, and it’s no secret that the Taiwanese firm has always considered Surface tablets a potential threat to the ecosystem.

“They have the money to kill everybody”

Back in 2012, just after the launch of the Surface RT, Microsoft’s first tablet in history, Acer’s CEO JT Wang criticized the Redmond-based giant for investing in hardware, a move that pretty much turned it into a rival to its own friends.

“They are doing something to kill the whole ecosystem,” Wang said at the time. “They have all this cash. They could kill everybody.”

Basically, Wang said that Microsoft was a software company and that was what it was supposed to do in the first place, with hardware to remain a business exclusively addressed to its partners.

Three years have passed since Microsoft started investing in hardware, and it turns out that Acer has changed its view in the meantime. A report by Digitimes quotes Acer's president of corporate business planning and operations Tiffany Huang as saying that Microsoft is doing the right thing by investing more in hardware, and devices such as the new Surface Book and the Surface Pro 4 are a good thing for the ecosystem.

What’s more, Huang has explained that 80 percent of the company’s inventory is based on Windows 8, but has promised to switch the focus to Windows 10 in early 2016, when several new devices are projected to go on sale across the world.