Happy Birthday, Microsoft Surface! Five years ago today, Microsoft unveiled the Windows-powered Surface devices for consumers. Microsoft announced Surface back in 2012 at an event presented by CEO Steve Ballmer. The device was initially called ‘Surface for Windows RT’ but it eventually became Surface RT.
The Surface is Microsoft’s own hardware lineup with Windows operating system and it was launched to create a new category of 2-in-1 premium devices. As Windows on laptops started to look and feel boring, Microsoft decided to come up with something innovative and finally released a Surface device with Windows operating system.
The first Surface device, of course, ran Windows 8 operating system. “With Windows 8 we don’t want to leave any seam uncovered; we wanted to give it its own hardware innovation. It’s something new, something different, a whole new family of computing devices from Microsoft,” Ballmer said.
“We created a new category of 2-in-1s where even our OEMs are finding success, which was one of our strategic objectives of doing the Surface,” Nadella said.
The Surface ran an optimized version of Windows called Windows RT, a version of Windows designed for devices on the ARM processor. Today, Windows RT is dead but Microsoft is not going to give up on the Surface lineup, the company recently launched Surface Book 2 and is also planning to release a phone under the Surface brand as well.
The company is also testing Windows 10 on ARM while it’s too early for Microsoft to unveil its expected next-generation Surface ARM devices. The Redmond-based company wants to bring back the Surface ARM devices but this time with Windows 10 and not another RT.
