Microsoft Fall Hardware Event - Will the "Cardinal" Fly

Today - several of the MS company watcher sites reported that MS will be holding a Fall Hardware event sometime in late October.  While the exact date has not been announced - insiders are saying on or about Oct 26 in NYC.

 Basically this event is going to provide MS the opportunity to highlight their Windows 10 offerings for the Holiday selling season.  

 One of the rumored new products is the platform code named Cardinal - the Surface branded All-in-One desktop.   

 Few details and many rumors abound regarding Cardinal in terms of what models/screen sizes (21, 24 or 27") will be available and if it will utilize the Pixel Sense technology from Surface Hub.   

 What I do expect is that these devices will support 4K screens, latest Intel Core i5 & i7 CPU, M.2 SSD and 802.11ac wireless as well as Windows Hello cameras and Continuum.  

 I also expect them to be relatively expensive compared to their peers from Lenovo, HP and Dell with the upper end models easily exceeding $2K.  

 With the release of an AIO format - MS has effectively created a full portfolio of Windows 10 Client offerings and can say we compete against Apple across their core portfolio.

 Lumia 950/950XL     iPhone 7
Surface Pro 4           iPad Pro / MacBook Air
SurfaceBook            Macbook Pro
"Cardinal"                iMac

The only gap is with traditional tower desktop - which I can't see MS going after with so many partners in the space and the Mac Pro being such a slow seller.

 I like the AIO format and in fact own an older HP Touchsmart.  But the reality is I don't use touch or a pen on it and it's simply more of reduced footprint use case.  And while Cardinal will provide the largest screen sizes of any Surface devices - the question I have is will people be willing to pay a premium for that size increase.     

 The watchers are also stating their may be a mid-term refresh to the Surface Pro 4 and SurfaceBook to take advantage of some technology updates much like all other major OEMS do.   I don't expect any naming changes - so Surface Pro 5 or SurfaceBook 2 as those will be released along with the Windows 10 Redstone 2 release in April of 2017.

 I also expect to see promo bundles around the latest xBox One S offerings to compete against Sony's updated PlayStation.  Especially with key game titles also releasing about the same time.

 Finally I also feel there will be a focus on 3rd party vendors like HP, Dell, Asus and Acer.   

 Bottom line is that it looks like MS will releasing an AIO format Surface device to compete against iMac.  I expect them to be competitively priced with iMacs, but I can't say they will be a major seller.  







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