Microsoft unveils first laptop, updated devices using Windows 10

Microsoft Corp unveiled on Tuesday its first laptop, a line of Lumia smartphones, a new Surface Pro tablet and an updated version of its wearable fitness tracker, Microsoft Band, all running on Windows 10, its latest operating system.

Microsoft is counting on Windows 10, launched in July, to help it win a bigger share of the market for tablets and smartphones, now dominated by Apple Inc and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Microsoft said its laptop, the Surface Book, will start at $1,499 and is twice as fast as Apple's MacBook Pro. It will be available from Oct. 26, with preorders starting on Wednesday.

The laptop has a 13.5-inch display with 267 pixels per inch and features a track pad made of glass.

Microsoft, whose shares were up 0.6 percent at $46.89 at midday, said 110 million devices were now running Windows 10.

The company unveiled three phones at an event in New York. The Lumia 950 and 950XL will have starting prices of $549 and $649 respectively when they go on sale in November, while the Lumia 550 will cost $139 when it becomes available in December.

The Lumia 950 includes a 5.2-inch display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor with hexacore CPUs. The Lumia 950 XL has a 5.7-inch display and a Snapdragon 810 processor with octa-core CPUs. The 550 has a 4.7-inch HD display and runs on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 210 processor. (bit.ly/1QWM6XT)

The new Surface Pro 4 tablet - a larger but thinner and lighter version of the Surface Pro 3 - is priced at $899 and will be available from Oct. 26 with pre-orders starting on Wednesday.

Launched nearly a year and a half after its predecessor, the Surface Pro 4 features a 12.3-inch screen with 267 pixels per inch. It runs on 6th-generation Intel Core processor and has 16GB of RAM and 1TB storage.

Surface Pro 4 is 50 percent faster than Apple's MacBook Air, Panos Panay, the corporate vice president for Surface Computing at Microsoft, said at the event.

"We're moving people from needing to choosing to loving Windows, and these devices promise to fuel even more enthusiasm and opportunity for the entire Windows ecosystem," Chief Executive Satya Nadella said at the event.

:story: Reuters