Get ready for big screens. Maybe. DigiTimes of Taiwan reports (citing unnamed sources) that Microsoft is about to make some huge additions to their Surface Pro line. And when we say huge, we mean “common computer monitor size”. Microsoft is allegedly making a 12-inch Surface Pro 4, a long with-- if the rumours are to be trusted-- a large 14-inch touchscreen. It’s reported that the reason for the change is that Microsoft wants customers to have a variety of choices when it comes to their hardware, and this makes a lot of sense, but not enough to make such a massive change. Of course, this is also why reviewers aren’t taking the rumours seriously.
If the rumours are true, what makes more sense, however, is that Microsoft is finally taking reports that desktop computers are dying as a market far more seriously than we had assumed. While tablets are used more for businesses (and the Surface Pro is targeted at the business user), these giant screens could serve another purpose-- to begin migration of offices with large-scale desktop use to Windows 10 and giant 14-inch Surface Pros. If this is Microsoft’s game plan, it is quite the surpris e at first glance (after all, who’s going to walk around with a tablet the size of a small child?) but makes more sense for setting up Surface Pros that might not move that much from their location. Like, say, in place of a desktop. And if that’s the case, Microsoft has out-thought all the pundits considering its early demise: in fact, Microsoft may be positioning itself in a better position than Apple, and that could have a backwards ripple effect on Microsoft’s suffering phone share.
VERDICT: The rumour simply has to be true. It sounds strange until you think of why Microsoft would make such a move-- and then you realise that perhaps it was Microsoft who had it planned out all along in anticipation of traditional desktop obsolescence.
