Do you have high hopes for a tablet? Apparently Microsoft does. The company recently revealed at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference that it expects to sell “a few million Surface PCs” within the next year. This is certainly a fair estimate and much better than the likes of other failed devices, such as the HP TouchPad before the massive fire sale and the BlackBerry PlayBook, which are both pretty much dead in the water.
While it’s certainly not the 10 million figure that the first iPad saw during its launch in 2010, part of the reason for the conservative wording could be that Microsoft hasn’t hammered out whether the new Surface tablets will be available at retail locations other than its own Stores. Currently there are just a handful of these scattered around the United States, so those who might be interested in Windows 8 on a tablet would have to order from Microsoft online if they are not mass-produced for retail consumption.
[via Neowin]
