NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang confirmed Thursday that his company is working closely with Microsoft to develop the Surface 2, ensuring more success for the device.
Although the Surface RT failed to make much of a splash, Microsoft has already begun developing its second generation model. Huang said NVIDIA is "working very hard" on the second generation Surface, hoping it will achieve greater success than the previous model.
NVIDIA supplied the processor for the first generation Surface RT, but sales of the tablet have been sluggish. Last month, Microsoft took a $900 million charge for unsold Surface RT inventory and subsequently disclosed that total revenue from the Surface RT and Surface Pro since their launch last fall was only $853 million.
The first generation Surface RT came equipped with an ARM-based processor rather than an Intel one. Huang believes its biggest issue was the lack of a pre-installed Outlook app at launch. "It's a killer app for Windows," he said, "and now we're going to bring it into the second generation Surface. We really are putting a lot of effort into making the Surface successful."
The industry has long believed that Microsoft is developing a new Surface, possibly including a smaller screen version. Qualcomm and NVIDIA are considered potential suppliers of processors for the new Surface RT, though neither company has yet confirmed this.