Seems I recall that at least initially MicroSoft communicated that they felt compelled to produce the Surface in order to provide a platform to showcase Windows for touchscreen tablet, whatever that version of Windows OS is called, was it RT?
How many other devices elected to run this operating system? Very few as far as I can tell. Very few as in one. There’s a stray Windows phone from Nokia but no other Windows devices let alone tablets.
A very poor showing, imho.
Surface RT was a flop, but the Surface pro series which uses full x86 architecture and desktop OS is what is pulling the profit.