Microsoft Live Event Touts Innovations In Tablets, Gaming, Wearables, More

From the Band it’s on to the stuff you’ve all been waiting for, starting with the Lumia 950 and 950 XL. These babies have octacore and hexacore processors in them (that’s seven and eight cores respectively for you non-math majors) and “tablet class liquid cooling”. 5.2” and 5.7” screens respectively, 20 mp cameras, 4K video recording, and 32GB of expandable storage are just some of the features. Available in November, the phones will retail for $550 and $650 respectively.

Now we’re moving on to the Surface Pro 4, which is thinner and lighter than the Pro 3, yet is 30% more powerful according to Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT). It also comes with an impressive 16GB of RAM and a 1TB HD, while the slightly-larger 12.3” screen has more than five million pixels crammed onto it. The keyboard has been upgraded with better spacing, and the pen can attach magnetically to the device, ensuring you won’t easily lose it. There’s even a fingerprint scanner, along with Microsoft Hello functionality to log different users in. The Surface Pro 4 will ship on October 26 for $899.

Lastly, we have the Surface Book, Microsoft’s first-ever laptop. Microsoft pulls no punches in saying it’s the most powerful 13.5” laptop ever developed, and claiming it is twice as fast as a MacBook Pro. It runs Intel’s Core i5 and i7 processors, in addition to packing in an Nvidia GeForce GPU with GDDR5 memory. The keyboard is detachable from the screen, allowing it to be used on its own as a tablet if desired, while the laptop can run for 12 hours on a single charge, an impressive feat for such a powerful device. The Surface Book will launch on the same day as the Pro 4, for $1,499.

Microsoft is up by 0.60% following the event, and we believe investors will like what they saw from the tech giant, which has steadily become a more popular stock in recent years. 107 investors from our database held $18.32 billion in Microsoft shares, 5.10% of the company’s outstanding stock, as of the end of June. Jeffrey Ubben’s ValueAct Capital was the largest shareholder of Microsoft at that time among the funds we track, holding 75.27 million shares worth $3.32 billion. Three other investors in our database held Microsoft stakes worth more than $1 billion as of June 30, including Stephen Mandel’s Lone Pine Capital.

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