Despite a lot of bad reviews for its new Surface Pro tablet, Microsoft hasn't lost the hearts of its true-blue fans, enterprise office workers.

Market researcher Forrester predicts that some 200 million people worldwide want a Windows tablet for their next work tablet. So it says in a new report titled "2013 Mobile Workforce Adoption Trends"

Forrester surveyed nearly 10,000 enterprise employees in 16 countries and found that 32 percent want a Windows tablet to use for work. This compares to 26 percent who want an iPad and 12 percent who want an Android tablet.

There isn't the same kind of love for Windows phones. 33 percent want an iPhone, compared to only 10 percent that want a Windows phone.

With that data, the researchers estimated worldwide demand:

"Forrester projects that globally, 615 million people will be information workers in 2013 ... Based on that forecast and the data on the desire for the next phone or tablet, we project that 208 million global information workers would like to use an iPhone for work, and 200 million global information workers would like to use a Microsoft Windows tablet for work."

So, despite the dismal early sales of Windows 8 devices, there's hope that Microsoft's core customers, enterprise users, will flock to its tablets eventually, if not its phones.

Source: Business Insider

Cool. Let's see how this translates over to sales.

The devil's in the detail for something like this ...

While I would never spend a dime on a Surface tablet, if my company was paying for it and setting up the office infastructure to take advantage of it I would want a Windows tablet; and those are (probably) two ifs that most people will have and the vast majority of companies won't meet.

Edit: You could probably simplify what I'm saying to "People want a tablet they don't pay for that is well integrated into their work eco-system and believe that would be the case with a Window's tablet; but if they have to pay for it and struggle with integrating it I doubt they would see any advantages over a iPad or Android tablet"

and after they do so will every one else! (I hope) Just ordered my windows phone yesterday, and I hope to get a windows 8 tablet by the end of the yaer or early next year. When ever they are more powerful than my current pc.

I'd like to know the exact wording of the survey. It's easy to get the answer you want when you abstract it.

Q: Would you like a tablet that runs the same applications your work desktop does so you can work remotely.
A: Okay

Q: Do you want a windows tablet?
A: No

I'm not sure the wording has to be that bad for people to make some pretty strong assumptions ...

For the most part, before the surface RT was launched the little bit of hype I heard was about how (since it was a Windows tablet) you wouldn't have problems reading/writing MS-office documents and/or it would integrate well with share-point and services on the office network; but with the little playing around I did, this wasn't the case (and I suspect the problems were mostly the result of version compatibility issues and platform configuration).

The point I was making is it's easy to lead people to vote one why simply by carefully choosing your wording.

This is just like that article that claimed most Japanese gamers want a Vita.

We all saw how that turned out.

One runs every desktop application written for x86 hardware and smartphone apps while the other run smartphone apps only. No surprises about which one is desired most.

Surface is the Vita of tablets, then? :D