Microsoft writes off nearly $1B to account for Surface RT bomb
Tablet flop hits earnings, which missed Wall Street's expectations by large margin Microsoft today took an unexpected $900 million charge to account for what it called "inventory adjustments" for the Surface RT, the poor-selling tablet that debuted last year. Later today, Microsoft will hold a conference call with Wall Street analysts, but its fourth-quarter fiscal numbers -- published on its website shortly after the U.S. financial markets closed -- pointed out the massive write-down. The company has been aggressively discounting the Surface RT, which runs the scaled-down Windows RT, a tablet-specific version of Windows 8 that relies exclusively on the "Modern," nee "Metro," tile-based user interface and app ecosystem. On Sunday, for instance, Microsoft chopped the price of the Surface RT by $150, or 30% for the 32GB model, to bring it down from the original $499 to $349. The 64GB Surface RT was also discounted by $150, a 25% price ...