Microsoft acknowledges the risk that OEMs may abandon ship

Let’s be honest, you and plenty of others probably saw this coming when Microsoft announced the Surface tablet, a device which they pretty much designed and built themselves, thereby annoying and possibly angering their manufacturing partners in the process. If you thought that this was a move made by Microsoft simply because they were confident about the Surface’s ability to sell, and the rush to adopt Windows RT for tablets, you might want to rethink that notion. According to the New York Times, it has been reported that Microsoft is a bit worried that some of their OEM partners might decide to abandon ship in light of Microsoft’s attempt at a homemade tablet.

In Microsoft’s annual to the Securities and Exchange Commissions, the company was quoted as saying, “Our Surface devices will compete with products made by our OEM partners, which may affect their commitment to our platform.” This is definitely in contrast to Steve Ballmer’s optimism when he said last month that “the importance of the thousands of partners that we have that design and produce Windows computers will not diminish.”