With the Windows 10 release looming, is it safe to expect Microsoft to release the much-awaited Surface Pro 4 very soon?
The latest OS upgrade will be arriving on July 29, which naturally led pundits to speculate that the Surface Pro 3's successor must be released about a month or so afterwards.
However, until now, Microsoft has not confirmed the existence or release of a Surface Pro 4, much less an official launch date for the said tablet. Despite this, it observers have predicted that such a model may see the light of day sometime next year.
This projection is the result of an analysis of a report that said the Windows OS maker and other "high profile tech outfits" (read: Apple) have ordered "a large amount of 256 GB SSDs that use Samsung's NVME technology," according to WinBeta.
"Samsung Electronics recently signed a new SSD supply contract for its 256 GB SSDs to be used in the laptops of major suppliers such as Apple and Microsoft," Business Korea confirmed. "The contract volume is estimated at 20 million units, and the supply is predicted to be completed by the second half of next year."
"The products are said to adopt the new standard of Non-Volatile Memory express (NVMe)," the publication added.
WinBeta clarified that such SSDs can "transfer data at 2 GB/s which is over three times the speed of the Surface Pro 3's 600 MB/s."
"This would be a dramatic increase that would differentiate between the Surface Pro 3 and Surface Pro 4," the site added.
Considering that the delivery of the SSDs would be completed by the second half of 2016, it could follow that a new device may be release around that same timeframe, too. Could it be the Surface Pro 4 this time? After all, the SSDs are considerably more powerful than those found in the Pro 3.
Further, it has also been reported that Microsoft is planning to resell its current flagship tablet and is currently linking with more partners in order to do just that.
"Microsoft's first wave of partners were really LSPs [licensed service providers] that already had a strong relationship with Microsoft," Microserve's VP for sales Ted Smith, as noted by CRN. "This wave may not be as entrenched in Microsoft's ecosystem -- we want to expand our relationship with Microsoft and the company's staff. It will be good for Microsoft to get more coverage in the marketplace by leveraging more resellers."
It is anticipated that this move could boost current and future Surface sales.
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