微软Surface Pro3发布 狂想消灭笔记本电脑

To hear Microsoft's top brass tell it, their 101,914-person, $327 billion company is made up of fanciful dreamers with a mission to empower the masses.
根据微软（Microsoft）高层的说法，这家拥有101,914名员工、市值3,270亿美元的公司由一群梦想家组成，他们的使命是赋予大众以力量。

At a press event today to introduce the Surface Pro 3 tablet, chief executive SatyaNadella and Surface Computing head Panos Panay repeatedly spoke of the "dreams" and "empowerment" that can be achieved with the company's new mobile device. The new Surface Pro is sleeker, faster, thinner, and lighter than its previous version, the executives said. It will allow people to perform business tasks such as word processing. And it "will replace the laptop."
在今天的Surface Pro 3平板电脑发布会上，微软首席执行官萨提亚o纳德拉和Surface部门领导帕诺斯o潘乃反复提到，利用微软这款新型移动设备可以实现“梦想”，获得“力量”。高管们表示，新款的Surface Pro比前两代产品更加轻薄时尚、运算速度更快。它能够让人们完成文字处理这类商务工作，还将“取代笔记本电脑。”

If nothing else, the Surface Pro 3 may be Microsoft's latest attempt in fulfilling its own long-held dream: to be a major player in a tablet market dominated by Apple, Amazon, and Samsung.
Surface Pro 3也许是微软为实现自己多年梦想所做的最后一次尝试，也就是在由苹果（Apple）、亚马逊（Amazon）和三星（Samsung）统治的平板电脑市场上成为强劲的竞争者。

Though the company has long offered "tablet computers," the device's modern incarnation has been a problem for Microsoft (MSFT). Even before Apple (AAPL) introduced the iPad in 2010, pundits predicted that tablets would eventually replace the laptop, just as the laptop had largely replaced the desktop computer. For Microsoft, that spelled trouble: Office and Windows have long been two of the company's most lucrative products. While PCs running Windows still dominate the laptop market, Apple's iOS leads the tablet market. To say that Microsoft is a distant third is an understatement.
尽管微软长期供应“平板电脑”，但怎样让这种设备变得时尚一直是这家公司的老大难问题。甚至在2010年苹果推出iPad之前，许多专家就预计平板电脑最终会取代笔记本电脑，正如笔记本电脑在很大程度上取代了台式机一样。对微软而言，这是一件麻烦事：多年来，办公软件Office和操作系统Windows都是这家公司最赚钱的两大产品。尽管台式机使用的Windows仍然统治着笔记本电脑市场，但苹果的iOS系统却在平板电脑市场遥遥领先。说微软是被远远抛在后面的老三都已经是有所保留了。（谷歌安卓和苹果iOS分列前二，这两大操作系统在平板电脑市场的占有率达到了97.9%。）

One of the best ways for Microsoft to get its software on tablets would be to make its own. Thus, Surface.
微软想要让自己的软件出现在平板电脑上，最好的办法之一就是研发自己的产品。因此，Surface应运而生。

To date, Surface hasn't been a success. Microsoft has lost more than $1.2 billion on its tablet business so far, prompting analysts to call it a "money pit." Even with sales doubling year-over-year in the fourth quarter, Surface tablets make up less than 10% of the market, according to industry tracker IDC.
迄今为止，Surface还不能算得上成功。截至目前，微软已经在平板电脑业务上亏损了超过12亿美元，分析家们把它称作“资金无底洞”。根据信息技术行业服务提供商IDC的数据，尽管Surface在2013年第四季度的销量同比翻番，在市场上的占有率却仍然不到10%。