Surfacing Surface

Harry McCracken has a Time article about Microsoft:

Brokerage firm Detwiler Fenton says that Microsoft’s Surface tablets are selling far more poorly than expected, and that the biggest problem is the fact that the only retail outlets that have them are Microsoft’s own stores. As All Things D’s John Paczkowski reports:

Detwiler Fenton, a Boston-based brokerage firm, said in a research note today that Microsoft is likely to sell just five hundred to six hundred thousand Surface RTs in the December quarter, far below its previous expectation of one million to two million. The reason: Microsoft’s tablet strategy is in 'disarray'. “Lack of distribution is killing the product,” Detwiler Fenton explained. “Mixed reviews and a $499 starting price tag certainly don’t help, but lack of retail exposure at Best Buy and others is severely depressing sales.”

As I wrote last week, I don’t understand how anyone— including Microsoft and Detwiler Fenton— could ever have thought Surface would sell in vast quantities as long as the only place to see one in person is the Microsoft Store chain, which has fewer than a hundred locations, even when you count the temporary outlets which the company has opened for the holidays. I’m just a humble tech pundit, not an expert on retail distribution, but the math never added up, and I continue to think that Microsoft’s in-house estimates may never have involved seven-digit unit sales in just a few months.
(I’m also confused by Microsoft’s ad campaign for Surface, which never mentions the fact that it’s not available from any of the merchants you think about when you think of buying a PC.)
Assuming that Surface doesn’t turn out to be a brief-lived folly, I think it pretty much has to be far more broadly available, and soon. Microsoft can’t build Microsoft Stores fast enough to reach the scale it needs. Best Buy and its rivals would presumably love to get their hands on Surface, even if selling it will tick off HP, Acer, and other purveyors of Windows-based computing devices. So if the tablet reaches its first birthday as a Microsoft Store exclusive, I’ll be startled.

Rico says he wouldn't want one if Bill Gates bought it for him personally. But $500? For that, you could buy a serious iPad... (And Rico won't be surprised if Surface doesn't survive its first birthday, given that Best Buy is running 'all things Apple' television ads for the holidays...)