Steve Ballmer: We made ‘a few more Surface RT tablets than we could sell’


Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted the company overestimated the number of Microsoft Surface RT tablets it could sell after it emerged the company had to right off $900 million of stock.


With just 260,000 Surface RT tablets sold globally to date, Microsoft revealed last week that it was sat on more than $900 million (£591m) worth of unsold stock. Responding to these somewhat troubling figures, Ballmer said the company might have been slightly overzealous in its estimations.


"We built a few more devices than we could sell," Ballmer said during an internal town hall meeting earlier this week. He went on to admit that the near $1 billion loss was a huge blow for the company with its Windows devices facing struggling sales across the board.


"We're not selling as many Windows devices as we want to," Ballmer reportedly stated. While the company’s Surface tablet line has been plagued by weak sales, the Windows Phone platform has failed to push Android and iOS on the smartphone scene.


Earlier this month Microsoft teased the potential launch of a second-generation Surface tablet in the near future. Teased during the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference at the start of July, Microsoft’s COO Kevin Turner revealed a slide which was a roadmap of sorts for the company’s upcoming products.


As well as featuring an array of Bing and Skype updates, the slide showed four new Surface tablet iterations.


Further second-generation Microsoft Surface rumours have hinted that the refreshed models will support 4G connectivity options for the first time alongside a Snapdragon 800 CPU.


Read More: Microsoft Surface Pro review


Via: TechRadar