It has been a year

N2IT

http://mashable.com/2013/07/19/surface-rt-failure/ Did it fail? I like the post about the user community having to endure the buggy, bulky, virus infected OS for over 10 years. That made me chuckle quite a bit. (It's true)

apr911

Hasn't quite been a year yet... but at 9 months in, I would say that yes the Surface RT has performed poorly and, unless the price drop & 8.1 drastically turns sales around, I would not be surprised to see Microsoft kill off the RT line (both for Surface & Windows RT) once it runs through its current inventory.

That being said, the Surface Pro has only been out for 6 months and it is still going strong.

Ive owned the RT when it 1st came out and it was a really nice device but (at the time, and apparently still somewhat the case) the lack of apps really killed it for me. Especially since I couldnt get around the poor selection in the app store by running native Windows applications. I'd like to own a PRO but its too expensive right now.

I continue to feel Microsoft shot themselves in the foot by releasing 2 different lines... the RT and the PRO. Especially 3 months apart as they did. Sort of like when they came out with Vista and had 15 different versions, it muddied the waters making things too confusing. Plus I always felt the PRO would cut into sales of the RT line by power users (most of whom are the early adopters you want to target first).

If they really wanted to go with 2 different models as they have, they should have come out at the same time... Failing that, they should have released the PRO version 1st to grab the attention of the power users & early adopters and then released the RT version later as a lower cost alternative.

As an additional benefit to this method, they could have built their app store with the PRO, where the availability of "Surface" apps is less critical, so that when the RT came out there were actually apps available for the device which can only run "Surface" apps.

All that being said, I think the Surface will grab a decent, albeit small, share of the market for now. Enough so that Microsoft will likely continue development of it and maybe with the 2nd generation we'll see numbers that compare better to other devices.

P.S. Im not going to discuss how "bad" the surface is doing compared to iPad/Android/etc. Its been done [here: http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/86015-initial-thoughts-my-hands-surface-pro-3.html ], and frankly I hate the comparison of what was a 4th gen device (which the iPad 1 was... there were 3 generations of iPhone/iPod Touch before it) and now 6th gen device well established in the market to a 1st gen device trying to break into the market.

DevilWAH

If you are I education and or academic. Microsoft have just started pushing the surface at a reduced rate. And f you are staff or students you can purchase though you collage for your own private unit. Cost £139, that's the same as a kindle fire!! Ok it's for an RT but still it's a nice bit of kit for that cost.

It seems Microsoft is pushing to get in to education, if you are looking at moving from desk tops to a more tablet based model the RT is good for schools and collages who often don't have money or a large IT department.

I think 8.1 will improve he RT, still to be seen if it survives though.