Acer, which is one of the leading hardware vendors for Microsoft, thinks that Microsoft’s move of launching the Windows 8 Surface tablet to compete with iPad is going to fail. They are not happy with the way Microsoft is trying to take on Apple.
Acer’s senior VP and president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, during a talk with Reuters said:
“I don’t think it will be successful because you cannot be a hardware player with two products,” he said to Reuters. “Microsoft is working with two dozen PC vendors worldwide, including the local guys, whereas Apple is alone, it can more or less do what it wants. Microsoft is a component of a PC system. A very important component but still a component.”
“Instead of focusing on Windows 8, the software giant has started a whole new war with Apple, and the products — and partners — will suffer”, Ahrens said. “I worry that this will lead into a defocus internally for Microsoft, and then we have to suffer because we are working with their products,” He added.
He was also worried that Microsoft would shift resources into building a consumer hardware brand and retail operation and in the process take its eye off the ball in making sure Windows 8 was a success for the PC industry.
This is not a good situation for Microsoft. It means that hardware vendors are not happy with Microsoft’s decision of introducing their own tablet. Now they are not feeling confident enough to come up with more hardware for Windows 8. I think Microsoft’s main focus should have been encouraging hardware vendors to come up with some exciting and breathtaking hardware for Windows 8. If they wanted to launch their own tablet, they should have at least taken hardware vendors in confidence.
