Will Microsoft’s lower prices lure them away?

In a Surface event on Sept. 22, Microsoft unveiled a new phone, three tablets and a laptop under the Surface umbrella. The announcement seemed to be in line with expectations as suggested by a ho-hum rise in the share price of less than one per cent by end of day.

Aside from its Surface suite of products, Microsoft earns revenue on Azure, its cloud services division; Xbox, its gaming division; and LinkedIn.

For fiscal 2021, the company reported total revenues of $168 billion, up from $143 billion the prior year, driven by a $22billion increase in service and other revenue. Overall net income for the year came in at $61 billion, from $44 billion in fiscal 2020.

The Windows operating system is based on an open system that allows third-party products to interoperate with it. Examples of this are laptops that run on a Windows operating system but are manufactured and branded by Google, Dell or HP.

As for the open system used by Windows, Soberman said that it allows Microsoft to license its offerings and venture into new products and services without a massive investment.

In terms of working with other companies, “Microsoft tries to make its system as compatible and seamless with other providers who want to work on its system. It co-operates with Google and social media companies to try to increase the compatibility and performance of offerings on (Windows),” said Soberman.

Within the past 10 years, Microsoft has doubled-down on its consumer offerings with the first Surface tablet released in 2012 and many upgrades since then. Soberman said that Microsoft’s “Surface computers are state of the art and good looking” adding “this is the one product area where Microsoft is active and strong.”