Microsoft is announcing a new Surface Laptop Studio, along with the Surface Pro 8, Surface Go 3, a Surface Pro X with wi-fi and the second-generation Surface Duo smartphone.
Microsoft
Microsoft announced five new Surface products on Wednesday, including a laptop, three tablets and a new folding phone.
Microsoft doesn’t make a lot of money from hardware. Just 4% of the company’s revenue in the second quarter came from devices. The global PC market is led by Lenovo, HP, Dell and Apple, according to Gartner’s estimates.
While these enhancements might help maintain Surface revenue growth, it’s more likely they’ll promote the forthcoming Windows 11 operating system and Office productivity applications, both of which are more meaningful parts of Microsoft’s business, and inspire the work of fellow device makers.
Windows 11 comes out on Oct. 5, and the new PCs and phone Microsoft announced will launch at the same time. Pre-orders begin Wednesday in select markets. That means the devices are launching after the back-to-school shopping rush but will be coming in time for the holidays.
Here’s a rundown of the new Surface devices:
Surface Laptop Studio
Microsoft’s Surface Laptop Studio has a display you can tilt easily.
Microsoft
Microsoft announced its first Surface Laptop Studio computer, which draws inspiration from its all-in-one Surface Studio 2 desktop, which still hasn’t been refreshed since 2018. The $1,600 Surface Laptop Studio will replace Microsoft’s existing Surface Laptop and offers a new design.
It has a special hinge that lets you tilt the 14-inch display at an angle that covers the keyboard, which brings the screen closer and makes it easier to write on. Or, you can flip it over and use the Laptop Studio like a tablet. Unlike the Surface Laptop, however, the screen doesn’t detach.
Microsoft’s Surface Slim Pen 2 can be securely nestled near the bottom of the Surface Laptop Studio.
Jordan Novet | CNBC
Customers can conceal and charge the new $130 Surface Slim Pen 2 beneath the Surface Laptop Studio’s keyboard. The new Surface Pen has a finer point than the model it replaces and contains a motor that gives haptic feedback in response to events in some programs. A haptic trackpad on the computer provides a more pleasant clicking experience than previous Surface machines.
Surface Pro 8
Microsoft’s Surface Pro 8 has a new tray to securely store and charge the new Surface Slim Pen 2.
Microsoft
Microsoft also announced its flagship Surface Pro 8 tablet. The company reportedly delayed the release last year. The Surface Pro 8 starts at $1,100, compared with the $750 starting price of the Surface Pro 7, which came out in 2019.
The new model has a 13-inch display, which is larger than the 12.3-inch display on its predecessor, although the tablet is now slightly wider and heavier. The display has an adaptive color feature that adjusts the white balance to make viewing more comfortable. It’s been available on Apple’s MacBooks for years. The screen also has a dynamic refresh rate of up to 120Hz, which can help save battery life and makes scrolling smoother.
The Microsoft Surface Pro 8 with optional detachable keyboard.
Jordan Novet | CNBC
An optional $180 detachable keyboard has a spot to stow away and charge the new Slim Pen. Consumers can configure the new system with 11th-generation Intel Core chips and as much as 32GB of RAM. Microsoft said Pro 8 gets as much as 16 hours of battery life, compared with up to 10.5 hours on the Pro 7.
Surface Duo 2 phone
Microsoft’s Surface Duo 2 has a three-lens camera.
Microsoft
Microsoft’s first Surface Duo smartphone was a flop. It launched last year with buggy software and specs that were behind similarly priced phones. The new Surface Duo 2 delivers some of the features missing from last year’s model, like several new cameras, 5G support, near-field communications for mobile payments and stereo speakers. And it comes with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip used in other flagship phones like Samsung’s latest Galaxy devices.
While the two screens of the Surface Duo are closed, the rounded edges of the glass can show the time, as well as the number of missed calls, Teams messages and text messages.
Jordan Novet | CNBC
Like last year’s version, the Surface Duo 2 opens up to reveal two 5.8-inch screens that can be used together. You might run one app on one screen and another on the opposite display, for example. Or, you can stretch a single app across both displays and take advantage of 8.3-inches of space.
The Surface Duo 2 features curved glass displays.
Microsoft
The displays have a 90hz refresh rate, which should make scrolling and moving around apps smoother. Another new feature: when closed, the phone will show small notifications along the hinge.
It still isn’t as water-resistant as other phones and doesn’t have wireless charging.
The Surface Duo 2 starts at $1,500, which is $100 more than the original. It will ship in white or black.
Surface Go 3
The Surface Go 3.
Microsoft
Microsoft refreshed its Surface Go 3, a miniature version of its Surface Pro tablet. It starts at $400, without the keyboard, and can be configured with up to an Intel Core i3 chip, which Microsoft says is 60% faster than the chip used in last year’s Surface Go 2.
The company said the Surface Go 3 gets up to 11 hours of battery life, while the older version got up to 10. A variant with built-in LTE connectivity will become available in the next few months but, notably, 5G support is missing.
Surface Pro X
Microsoft will release a wi-fi version of its Arm-based Surface Pro X.
Microsoft
Lastly, Microsoft announced a new Wi-Fi-only version of the Surface Pro X, a tablet that was first launched in 2019 with LTE cellular support. It’s the first version to come with just Wi-Fi and it costs $900, down just $100 from the original model, even though it has the same chip and lacks any other notable hardware changes.
But, Windows 11 will enable the device to run specific 64-bit apps through emulation. That could mean people will be able to run more apps than they could when the first model launched.
Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi speaks at the opening night of the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles on Aug. 15, 2024.
Rodin Eckenroth | Filmmagic | Getty Images
Intuit shares fell 6% in extended trading Thursday after the finance software maker issued a revenue forecast for the current quarter that trailed analysts’ estimates due to some sales being delayed.
Here’s how the company performed in comparison with LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: $2.50 adjusted vs. $2.35 expected
Revenue: $3.28 billion vs. $3.14 billion
Revenue increased 10% year over year in the quarter, which ended Oct. 31, according to a statement. Net income fell to $197 million, or 70 cents per share, from $241 million, or 85 cents per share, a year ago.
While results for the fiscal first quarter topped estimates, second-quarter guidance was light. Intuit said it anticipates a single-digit decline in revenue from the consumer segment because of promotional changes for the TurboTax desktop software in retail environments. While that will affect revenue timing, it won’t have any impact on the full 2025 fiscal year.
Intuit called for second-quarter earnings of $2.55 to $2.61 per share, with $3.81 billion to $3.85 billion in revenue. The consensus from LSEG was $3.20 per share and $3.87 billion in revenue.
For the full year, Intuit expects $19.16 to $19.36 in adjusted earnings per share on $18.16 billion to $18.35 billion in revenue. That implies revenue growth of between 12% and 13%. Analysts polled by LSEG were looking for $19.33 in adjusted earnings per share and $18.26 billion in revenue.
Revenue from Intuit’s global business solutions group came in at $2.5 billion in the first quarter. The figure was up 9% and in line with estimates, according to StreetAccount. Formerly known as the small business and self-employed segment, the group includes Mailchimp, QuickBooks, small business financing and merchant payment processing.
“We are seeing good progress serving mid-market customers in MailChimp, but are seeing higher churn from smaller customers,” Sandeep Aujla, Intuit’s finance chief, said on a conference call with analysts. “We are addressing this by making product enhancements and driving feature discoverability and adoption to improve first-time use and customer retention.”
Better outcomes are a few quarters away, Aujla said.
CreditKarma revenue came in at $524 million, above StreetAccount’s $430 million consensus.
At Thursday’s close, Intuit shares were up about 9% so far in 2024, while the S&P 500 has gained almost 25% in the same period.
On Tuesday Intuit shares slipped 5% after The Washington Post said President-elect Donald Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” had discussed developing a mobile app for federal income tax filing. But a mobile app for submitting returns from Intuit is “already available to all Americans,” CEO Sasan Goodarzi told CNBC’s Jon Fortt.
Goodarzi said on CNBC that he’s personally communicating with leaders of the incoming presidential administration.
On the earnings call, Goodarzi sounded optimistic about the economy.
“Our belief, which is not baked into our guidance, is that we will see an improved environment as we look ahead in 2025, particularly just with some of the things that I mentioned earlier around just interest rates, jobs, the regulatory environment,” he said. “These things have a real burden on businesses. And we believe that a better future is to come.”
Bluesky has surged in popularity since the presidential election earlier this month, suddenly becoming a competitor to Elon Musk’s X and Meta’s Threads. But CEO Jay Graber has some cautionary words for potential acquirers: Bluesky is “billionaire proof.”
In an interview on Thursday with CNBC’s “Money Movers,” Graber said Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers, which could thwart potential acquisition efforts.
“The billionaire proof is in the way everything is designed, and so if someone bought or if the Bluesky company went down, everything is open source,” Graber said. “What happened to Twitter couldn’t happen to us in the same ways, because you would always have the option to immediately move without having to start over.”
Graber was referring to the way millions of users left Twitter, now X, after Musk purchased the company in 2022. Bluesky now has over 21 million users, still dwarfed by X and Threads, which Facebook’s parent debuted in July 2023.
X and Meta didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Threads has roughly 275 million monthly users, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in October. Although Musk said in May that X has 600 million monthly users, market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates 318 million monthly users as of October.
Bluesky was created in 2019 as an internal Twitter project during Jack Dorsey’s second stint as CEO, and became an independent public benefit corporation in 2022. In May of this year, Dorsey said he is no longer a member of Bluesky’s board.
“In 2019, Jack had a vision for something better for social media, and so that’s why he chose me to build this, and we’re really thankful for him for setting this up, and we’ve continued to carry this out,” said Graber, who previously founded Happening, a social network focused on events. “We’re building an open-source social network that anyone can take into their own hands and build on, and it’s something that is radically different from anything that’s been done in social media before. Nobody’s been this open, this transparent and put this much control in the users hands.”
Part of Bluesky’s business plan involves offering subscriptions that would let users access special features, Graber noted. She also said that Bluesky will add more services for third-party coders as part of the startup’s “developer ecosystem.”
Graber said Bluesky has ruled out the possibility of letting advertisers send algorithmically recommended ads to users.
“There’s a lot on the road map, and I’ll tell you what we’re not going to do for monetization,” Graber said. “We’re not going to build an algorithm that just shoves ads at you, locking users in. That’s not our model.”
Bluesky has previously experienced major growth spurts. In September, it added 2 million users following X’s suspension in Brazil over content moderation policy violations in the country and related legal matters.
In October, Bluesky announced that it raised $15 million in a funding round led by Blockchain Capital. The company has raised a total of $36 million, according to Pitchbook.
Alphabet shares slid 6% Thursday, following news that the Department of Justice is calling for Google to divest its Chrome browser to put an end to its search monopoly.
The proposed break-up would, according to the DOJ in its Wednesday filing, “permanently stop Google’s control of this critical search access point and allow rival search engines the ability to access the browser that for many users is a gateway to the internet.”
This development is the latest in a years-long, bipartisan antitrust case that found in an August ruling that the search giant held an illegal monopoly in both search and text advertising, violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act.
The potential break-up would include preventing Google from entering into exclusionary agreements with competitors like Apple and Samsung, part of a set of remedies that would last 10 years.