Microsoft comes back with a two-screen tablet

The American giant has presented its "Surface Duo", a tablet that looks like a smartphone that has two screens and that "fits in the pocket

Microsoft presents it primarily as a tablet that "fits in the pocket", but the "Surface Duo" unveiled Wednesday by the computer group falls well on the smartphone, marking the return of the group in this market he had deserted.

The "Surface Duo" features two 14.2 cm (5.6-inch) screens that fold like a book, and is operated by Android, the operating system of Google, and not by Windows Phone, which Microsoft has stopped development in 2017.


Marketed in 2020

It will be marketed next year. "You're going to talk about it like a phone, I understand that," said Panos Panay, product director at Microsoft, during the presentation in New York of the group's latest news. "You can send text messages, you can write, you can do what you want, but this product is a Surface," he insisted.

From 2010 to 2017, the American firm tried to convince consumers to buy Windows phones, but it ended up abandoning this market, accepting its failure in this area against rivals Apple (iOS) and Google (Android) .

The Windows operating system, still largely computer-dominated, still represents considerable revenue for the company. But Azure, its business services offering in remote computing and cloud storage, is now driving Microsoft's growth, which can also count on video games with Xbox, its range of devices. Surface and the LinkedIn professional network, acquired in 2016.

"Never 2 without 3"

The group cultivates the mystery, not only about the nature of its new device, but also about its features, such as the type of camera or the price, two essential factors in a saturated market of high-performance handsets.

Global smartphone sales fell 2.6% in the second quarter of 2019, and are largely dominated by the South Korean giant Samsung (22% market share), followed by the Chinese Huawei and Oppo, according to studies. of analysts published in August.

The Surface Duo brings together Microsoft productivity, Android apps and Surface design in one device you can take anywhere. And, yes, he can make phone calls, "briefly describes the release of the group. "The story of Microsoft in smartphones, with Kin and Nokia, was not exactly brilliant," said analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy.

In 2010, the software giant had removed the range of phones Kin after only a few weeks. Four years later, he bought the mobile phone branch of Finnish Nokia for over $ 7 billion. The brand was losing money, and Microsoft failed to save it against the competition. This failure was a determining factor in the decision to exit this market and transform the company founded by Bill Gates.

Never 2 without 3, and I think this time will be good because the conditions for the success of a Surface smartphone seem to be met, "said Patrick Moorhead.

The analyst takes into account the good growth of the Surface devices ecosystem, the possibilities offered by the Android operating system and its 2.8 million applications (including those of Microsoft) and a sufficiently original and different design . "If the price is well calibrated against the flagships of competitors, consumers might want to adopt," he says.

Microsoft also introduced the new cousins ​​of its smartphone in the Surface range: a dual-screen tablet, laptops and headphones. All must be marketed before the end of the year, but the group did not say at what prices.