Virtual Pants

Here’s an interesting exchange between a commenter and Paul Thurrott regarding his article yesterday on the Surface Pro “selling out” on launch day:

brians: Considering that there are 1,900 Staples stores and 1,105 Best Buy stores, at two per store, that would be (1,900+1,105)*2=6,010 tablets. Gee, I’m excited Paul, I clearly must be wrong about Microsoft’s abject failure in tablet space. :-)

pthurrott (staff): Two things. 1. Stop being a dick. I’ll just stop OKing these kinds of pointless comments. 2. I assume you’ve seen the comments about 150+ units being sent to stores. So whatever. Actually, 3. Don’t respond.

The commenter has a great point. Two units per store is a very fair estimate for Best Buy and Staples. The 150+ number referred to by Thurrott was the high-end estimate for Microsoft Stores. Let’s add up all the Surface Pros sold in the U.S. yesterday based on these estimates:

Best Buy: 1,103 stores * 2 units per store = 2,206.

Staples: 1,575 stores * 2 units per store = 3,150.

Microsoft Store: 30 stores * 150 units per store = 4,500.

That’s 9,856 Surface Pros sold in U.S. retail stores on launch day. Many more were likely sold online, but less than 10,000 units available in retail stores is an embarrasment by any measure.