Surface Book To Be Sold By Channel Partners, Surface Trade-In Program Announced

Surface Book

A few months back, Microsoft announced that they would be expanding the channels for which the Surface line of tablets could be sold and since that announcement in July, there are now more than 5,000 business resellers in 30 markets. This rapid growth in expansion has allowed the company to aggressively pursue the lucrative corporate segment and it looks like their efforts are paying off.

The company said today that the adoption rate of the Surface Pro 4 into the corporate markets is outpacing that of the Surface Pro 3 (or any prior Surface). Considering that the Pro 4 is still only open for pre-orders, this likely means that corporations are ordering the devices in bulk, at least compared to the prior generation, with a future delivery date.

The fact that corporations are jumping to the Pro 4 faster than the Pro 3 shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise as before the Pro 3 was introduced, the Pro 2 and original Pro did not fair so well in the market. What the Pro 3 did was establish Microsoft’s credibility for building a PC that consumers and corporations truly want which means when the Pro 4 was announced, companies already knew it was a good product and are willing to adopt it faster.

To help the new companies that are adopting the Surface Pro, Microsoft is also introducing two new programs to the Surface Enterprise Initiative. These programs include a comprehensive warranty and service offering called Microsoft Complete for Enterprise, as well as a permanent device trade-in program for businesses.

For corporations who have invested in Surface devices and want to move to the new generation, Microsoft has announced a permanent trade-in program that, at any time, a company can request a quote for their hardware that they can use to trade-in towards the purchase of new gear.

In addition to these new programs, Microsoft has also confirmed that these resellers will be able to offer the Surface Book as well.

The new trade-in programs along with the strong early adoption of the Pro 4 shows that Microsoft is committed to hardware and that its clients are buying in to this message as well. While this is good news for the Redmond based company and its channel partners, it does make you wonder if any other OEMs are getting a bit nervous as Microsoft is slowly encroaching on their territory