Microsoft Surface And CoPilot Event - All The Successors That Weren't

In the post Panos Panay world, Microsoft held its first major event centered around Surface products and AI updates on September 21st, 2023. While Panos's departure came as a surprise, the missing of many surface products from the rooster raised many eyebrows. 

Does Microsoft's Surface Division fall prey to the company's recent cost-saving strategies? Is there a link between missing products and Panos's exit? Clarity is expected to emerge over time, however, it would be extremely short-sighted on Microsoft's end to kill-off Surface Division after all these years of building premium products. Surface devices, despite some imperfections, have earned recognition for their top-tier construction and have pushed industries forwards by introducing many creative innovations that were lacking in the past.

Here is the list of all the Surface Products that were missing from the event and we don't know if they would ever be getting their successors or not:

Windows on ARM

Windows on ARM has been a comprehensive miss. Despite having a decade of head-start over Apple, Microsoft could not crack the ARM puzzle. Most of this has to do with the lack of serious ARM based SoC. Qualcomm doesn't look serious as far as its Desktop offerings are concerned. This coupled with lack of native ARM-based apps and slow emulation made Windows on ARM a very bad experience.

Surface Laptop 6

Surface Laptop series is among the top of the line in the premium segment however, Surface Laptop 5 left a lot to be desired. Despite its unique aspect ratio, the thick borders made it felt like a device from yesteryear. The successor was expected to upgrade the internals with the latest Intel offerings alongside trimming the bezels. 

Surface Pro X2

Despite the challenges faced by Windows on ARM and the presence of a robust SoC, Surface Pro X was a device that showed what a future would look like. It is one of the most beautiful piece of hardware available on the market that would put any offerings from Apple to shame. But like it is sometimes said, beauty is skin deep. There was a hope of a powerful Surface Pro X successor that would at least up its ante in the emulation department to mitigate the lack of native applications. Only time will time if there would be any more Surface Pro X devices.

Surface Pro 10

Well, whether it would have called Surface Pro 10 or something else, Surface Pro's miss-announcement is rather a surprise. Surface Pro holds the distinction of being the longest-standing member in the Surface Family and the lack of the announcement of its successors left a lot of questions unanswered. Microsoft also confused customers with Surface Pro 9 by offering it in both ARM and x86 variants without a clear distinction. There was a hope of a unified Surface Pro line that would merge the best of Surface Pro X with Surface Pro 9 but that dream is still unfulfilled.

Surface Duo 3

This was perhaps the most obvious missing item. There were already rumors circulating about Surface Duo being discontinued at least in its traditional form. The hope was for Microsoft to offer a true foldable that would be considered successor to ill-dated Surface Duo 2. This didn't happen and from the looks of it, it may never happen either.

Surface Studio 3

The follow-up to the Surface Studio 2 Plus remained conspicuously absent. Surface Studio is perhaps one of the biggest form-factor upgrade to traditional all-in-one desktops and its missing is really felt. I was anticipating a cheaper version with either AMD or Intel's U processor and integrated graphics targeting school and college students. Hope we would still see a successor to Surface Studio 2 Plus 

One More Thing

If there was someone after Steve Jobs whose presence on the stage would give you the vibe of that 'One More Thing', he was Panos Panay. And Surface event was over without any "one more thing". May be we would hear this in an "Alexa" event in the future. Fingers crossed!