What the Surface Pro 3 says about Microsoft's hardware strategy

Does Microsoft's hybrid tablet announcement point to a more focused hardware division under Satya Nadella's new company?

"Why hardware?" asked Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in his introduction to Microsoft's unveiling of the Surface Pro 3 this week.

"We are clearly not interested in building refrigerators or toasters, and we're not interested in competing with OEMs when it comes to hardware."

But the product that Microsoft revealed, which Nadella said followed the Surface concept of enabling users to "enjoy art and create art", didn't really address the question, or back up his statement.

Why hardware, indeed. And does Nadella genuinely believe that a slicker, thinner and lighter hybrid tablet won't put the cat among the pigeons with partners like Lenovo, HP and Dell?

Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal told Computing that he believes the Surface Pro 3 may just be another attempt by Microsoft to "raise their profile above being just an operating system - showing something different and innovative".

However, it's also likely that, as with the original model, the machine could be Microsoft showing its OEMs how best to represent the troublesome, multi-UI nature of Windows 8 as designers continue struggling to market a concept that, at its best, should be used by a three-armed person clutching a pen and a keyboard while swiping and jabbing with fingers.

Rumours before the event seemed to be fitting Microsoft up to be announcing a small tablet - a 'Surface Mini' - perhaps of 7in in screen size. In many ways, this could have been more interesting, and more in line with a business plan first laid out by outgoing CEO Steve Ballmer at the company's Build developer conference in 2013.

There, Ballmer held Acer's (since critically drubbed 8in Iconia W3) aloft and used it to herald an apparent "explosion in the range of innovative new devices" in the tablet market. He stated that the Iconia was "literally [sic] flying off the shelves in terms of volume and appreciation", and promising a "proliferation over the course of the next few months" of such small tablet devices.

Indeed, at this year's Build, Microsoft proudly announced free Windows licences for devices under 9in in screen size, again suggesting a desire for production of smaller Windows tablets.

A 12in Intel Core i7-powered "laptop replacement", as Microsoft's VP of Surface computing, Panos Panay, called the new machine, is really not moving off the page Microsoft was already on with regards to its original aims for Surface.

But perhaps that's the point as far as Microsoft's plans for its own hardware go: the Surface dream is perpetuating while other notions seem to be dwindling. Has Nadella's "mobile first, cloud first" (he said it again at the Surface Pro 3 launch) taken a leaf out of Steve Jobs' book and opted for a clearer, less device-fragmented focus?

After all, Surface, with its 10.6in screen yet clunky body and keyboard reliance lay in a strange hinterland between tablet and laptop. A slightly increased body size and more iPad-like 3:2 screen ratio still feels very much like a tablet, but is now gunning for the MacBook too.

Panay made great play of this by weighing the device next to a MacBook, as well as poking fun at the number of MacBooks in the audience that were probably accompanied by "an iPad in your bag".

What the Surface Pro 3 says about Microsoft's hardware strategy

Does Microsoft's hybrid tablet announcement point to a more focused hardware division under Satya Nadella's new company?

At the same time, while there was no Surface Mini announcement, there was a distinct absence of Surface's usual evil twin lurking in the shadows. No Surface 3 RT has been announced yet and it feels - as Universal Apps become a reality and Windows 8.1 and Windows 8.1 Phone get all the attention in this regard - that arguably there never should be.

Has Nadella's deft restructuring of Microsoft's hardware division, placing post-Nokia acquisition Stephen Elop as its head, finally resulted in some positive action?

Last week also saw the apparent death of long-disliked motion gaming peripheral Kinect, which Microsoft had forced Xbox One buyers to purchase with the console, and which at launch the company stated was essential to the machine's function, and even as recently as Feburary 2014 was telling the press there were "no plans" to sell the machine without Kinect.

Surface Pro 3 may not be a particularly exciting or innovative link in this chain of focus that Microsoft's hardware arm is now experiencing, but it's certainly "a stepping stone", as Gartner's Atwal stated.

"We'll no doubt see more and more come from them, but it won't happen overnight," said Atwal. "Still, it's a good, decent product that any of the OEMs should choose to emulate."

Atwal, however, agrees that RT may now be dead in the water, with a new Microsoft that is happy to say: 'Let's kill it if it's not working.'

And while the Surface Pro 3 looks more like a BYOD choice than the machine that could persuade CIOs to go all-in with Windows 8, the raw power and honed productivity it seems to represent could usher in a truly new era of tablets that certain Apple-centric execs may be unwise to ignore.