Microsoft Surface Pro 3: Hot Or Not?

"I asked the resident tablet expert at market researcher IHS , Rhoda Alexander.

“It definitely qualifies as a success if you look at their efforts in the tablet market,” she said. ”We’re not looking at iPad volumes certainly but for a company that started out two years ago without having made a PC and trying to do it on a platform that is not the dominant platform in the tablet market, it’s a success.”

So, let’s call it a qualified success.   It’s not the 21.4 million iPads Apple AAPL +0.14% sold during its first quarter but, as Alexander said, this isn’t iOS or Android and Microsoft is still new to selling PCs.

Whether Microsoft is actually making money on Surface is, needless to say, also a pertinent question.  The answer may be a qualified no — at least according to one market analyst."