Microsoft’s tablet fall short of predictions

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has sold about 1.5 million Surface devices, people with knowledge of the company’s sales said, a slow start in its bid to crack the fast-growing tablet market to make up for slumping personalcomputer demand.

Microsoft has sold little more than a million of the Surface RT version and about 400,000 Surface Pros since their debuts, according to three people, who asked not to be named because sales haven’t yet been made public. The company had ordered about 3 million Surface RTs, they said. Brent Thill, an analyst at UBS AG, had initially projected that Microsoft would sell 2 million Surface RT devices in the December quarter alone.

A customer inspects a Microsoft Corp. Surface tablet inside the company’s store in New York. Microsoft’s Surface RT, its first-ever computer hardware product, went on sale Oct. 26. The more expensive Surface Pro, which is built on an Intel Corp. computer chip and can run older PC software, arrived last month.

The poor reception for Surface, unveiled last year, adds to challenges facing Microsoft’s Windows unit, which brings in a quarter of the company’s revenue. The devices are Microsoft’s first direct attempt to grab a slice of the surging market for tablets, seeking to take on Google Inc. and Apple Inc. and prove that Windows has a place in a world of touch screens and smartphone applications. That hasn’t happened so far, said Alex Gauna, an analyst at JMP Securities LLC in San Francisco.