Microsoft's shares took a beating following its gloomy fiscal 2013 earnings report earlier this month, in which it wrote down nearly a billion dollars on its unloved Surface RT fondleslabs. But the software giant isn't out of the woods yet, because new details have emerged that have the full Surface picture looking even worse than was previously thought.
In Redmond's annual 10-K report to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), published on Tuesday, the software giant reported actual Surface revenue figures for the first time – and they're not good.
According to the report, Microsoft's total Surface revenue for all of fiscal 2013 amounted to just $853m. That's nearly $50m less than the $900m charge Redmond took when it discounted its remaining Surface RT inventory by $150 per box.
And that's not all. That $900m writedown was related to Surface RT only, but the $853m revenue figure includes sales of Surface RT and Surface Pro combined.
Such sluggish sales aren't likely to have covered Microsoft's costs for the Surface launch, especially when you consider the massive marketing push it gave the ill-fated devices.
Further down in its 10-K filing, Redmond reports that it upped its sales and marketing budget for the Windows Division in 2013 by a jaw-dropping $1bn, which included an $898m increase in advertising costs "associated primarily with Windows 8 and Surface."
Got that? Microsoft spent more in a single year advertising the Windows 8 and Surface launches than it took in from Surface sales that same year.
Source: The Register
