Microsoft's Surface turns first profit in 2 years

"That's a gross margin ... which is not earth-shattering and in fact about half the gross margin of the phone business at Microsoft. But it's progress," Dawson wrote on his blog, where he published his analysis of Surface's financial performance.

Indeed.

Since its October 2012 introduction, Surface has been a money pit for Microsoft, in the hole to the tune of $1.73 billion through its first seven quarters. With the September quarter in the black, those overall losses have been reduced to about $1.6 billion.

Over the last four quarters, Surface also remained in the red, with losses of $325 million on revenue of $2.7 billion. Put another way, for each dollar Microsoft earned on Surface sales, it lost about 12 cents.

But were the brighter figures for the September quarter an accurate picture of what Microsoft really spent on the Surface No, said Dawson and others.