That was a good excuse for Surface and Surface pro, but not for Book and Laptop. What new tech did Surface Book or Laptop introduce?
Mac revenue increased 14% last quarter. iPad revenue fell 12%. Surface revenue fell 26%, even though Microsoft introduced two new products Surface Book and Surface Studio, and expanded distribution of Surface Hub.
Customers have the option of buying cheaper Windows PCs from OEMs, but they keep choosing Apple premium hardware and ignoring Microsoft premium hardware.
Macbooks -I won't argue they haven't been creeping up over the years. They have received a lot of design focus by apple.
I don't think anyone needs to argue whether laptop or book contain technological advances however, its clear they do.
The surfaces success: Windows 10's tablet market share is increasing, while apple and samsungs is decreasing (has for years), and clearly the laptop was released because notebooks are "trending" as a form of PC, and they want to tackle the MacBook and the chromebook.
The surface pro sales have only dipped because it needs a refresh, it most certainly has been popular - particularly with young tech early adopters. It's just getting long in the tooth, as technology does. Not that surface sales was the point - Microsoft needs to grow the platform, not their hardware line.
I also would not say other OEMs are "not premium". There are definitely OEM partners who have premium products that are selling well. If you look at overall market share of notebooks, they are not majority MacBook. MacBook merely dominates some niches.
I think they will want the laptop to decrease MacBook sales. And I think it will, laptop is after all a faster, longer lasting, lighter, better looking machine. There's not really any metric on which I can see the MacBook is better.
As an aside, I thought we might get some MacBook fans feathers ruffled up by this release when I saw the laptop released. I wonder what they are doing to deride this defensively over at imore