The troubled tablet which serves as the cheaper alternative to the more popular, Windows 8-equipped Surface Pro has failed to take off commercially, with its price cut at retail as a result.
Indeed, speaking in a earnings call following the release of the firm's quarterly results, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood noted that reducing the Surface RT's RRP may well "accelerate adoption" of the device, despite its apparent unpopularity.
It isn't all bad news for Microsoft, however.
An uptake in Windows Phone adoption thanks in no small part to Nokia helped Microsoft's device and service division grow by $134 million, and - as Hood noted in the call the firm as a whole "closed out the year with record on our revenue up $22.4 billion."
Slow transition
Essentially, while Microsoft's business remains perfectly comfortable, it's Hood's assessment that the transition of consumers from Windows 7 to Windows 8 is slower than the firm expected in part due to the rise of the smartphone.
"This quarter our Windows business declined as the device market continued to evolve beyond the traditional PC," added Hood.
"We are working to transition the business into this modern era of computing taking advantage of the new scenarios enabled by Windows 8. As we said before, given the complexity of the ecosystem this journey will take but we continue to make incremental progress."
However, while the poor performance of BlackBerry's PlayBook has resulted in the Canadian firm abandoning the sector altogether, Microsoft believes it still has something to prove.
"We are working hard with our partners to gain share in the evolving and growing device markets," concluded Hood.
"I want to be very clear, we know we have to do better and that's one reason we made a strategic and organisational changes we made last week."
[source: Seeking Alpha]
