Surface strikes for Apple's iPad

IN ITS most strategically significant push yet into the hardware business, Microsoft this week unveiled a tablet computer called Surface that is intended to challenge Apple’s iPad. The company showed off the device, which is about the same weight and thickness as an iPad, with a 10.6-inch screen, at an event in Los Angeles.

Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s chief executive, said the product was part of a long-standing tradition at Microsoft to create hardware, like computer mice, that show off innovations in its software. “We want to give Windows 8 its own companion hardware innovations,” Ballmer said.

Company executives were largely mum, however, on how Surface would affect the company’s relationships with PC makers, the hardware companies that are the vehicles for sales of Windows software.

With its new tablet, Microsoft will effectively be competing directly with its biggest customers. When asked whether Surface would damage those ties, Steven Sinofsky, president of Microsoft’s Windows division, gently pushed a reporter in the direction of a stand of Surface tablets and said, “Go learn something.”

Analysts said it wasn’t clear that Microsoft could depend on PC companies to build something as compelling as the iPad.

“This was clearly a referendum on Microsoft’s partners,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst at Gartner, a technology research firm. “Microsoft felt they could not rely on others to deliver on their vision for Windows 8 in mobile computing.”

Microsoft’s decision to create its own tablet was an acknowledgment that the company needed to depart from its regular way of doing business to get a grip on a threat to its dominance in computing.

While it has made a few hardware products over the years, including the Xbox video game console, Zune music player and computer keyboards, Microsoft is still thought of largely as a software company.

It has for decades left the work of creating the machines that run Windows to Hewlett-Packard, Dell and others.

The response to Apple’s iPad has considerably raised consumers’ expectations of how well hardware and software work together. That has put pressure on Microsoft to create a tighter marriage of hardware and software if it is to compete seriously with Apple’s products.

As it prepares to release Windows 8, which is designed for touch-screen devices, Microsoft can ill afford a flop.

The iPad has already eaten into sales of low-end Windows laptops, and there are growing signs that Apple’s tablet is becoming increasingly attractive to business customers, a lucrative market Microsoft has dominated for years.

Microsoft said one version of the Surface tablet would come with 32 gigabytes or 64 gigabytes of storage and feature a type of chip called ARM that is commonly used in mobile devices. Sinofsky said the price would be comparable to that of other tablets that use ARM chips. He said a professional version of the tablet would come with an Intel processor, which is standard in more conventional PCs, and would be similar in price to ultrabooks, thin laptops that often start at about $1,000 (€790).

Sinofsky said the ARM tablet would be available when the next version of Windows was released this autumn, and the professional version would go on sale a few months later. With the detachable keyboard for Surface, known as Touch Cover, Microsoft seemed to be positioning its tablet as a more business-friendly alternative to the iPad, one that is better suited to productivity tasks that require faster typing.