Of the many problems with Microsoft introducing its new Surface tablet this week, here are the top ten:

1. A large percentage of the market has already made their tablet OS / brand decision, and it will be exceedingly difficult to get them to switch. They’re loyal. There is, on average, over $100 per customer invested in apps which will not be compatible on Microsoft’s tablet.
2. How will Microsoft convince the good app makers to create for it? There simply won’t be enough apps for new customers. The decision will be this: do you want a tablet with millions of apps, or Microsoft’s?
3. How’d it work out for RIM’s Playbook tablet? This is an extremely difficult market to penetrate as a newcomer, even a well-known one.
4. It’s not like Microsoft has the advantages that Amazon had when introducing its Kindle Fire. Amazon has passionate fans, evangelists. Microsoft has users who have been buying up non-Microsoft devices (iPhone and Android devices, iPads and Android tablets) for years.
5. Microsoft is not a good marketer. You must be a good marketer to have a successful tablet introduction.
6. Microsoft Office software will not be enough to get people to buy the Microsoft tablet. Consumers have been making do on the iPad and Android tablets with substitutes for years. Microsoft Office is no longer prerequisite for productivity.
7. Why? Why does Microsoft have to be in the tablet market? Because it’s the future? What about Microsoft’s greatest strength, which is software. Why is Microsoft Office not available for the iPad or Android devices? Can somebody explain to me why Microsoft isn’t selling $50 copies of Office to tens of millions of tablet consumers? Is a half-billion in new tablet sales not interesting?
8. The biggest danger here is distraction. By focusing resources on this new tablet, Microsoft will be pulling away resources from its top advantages. Then again, one can argue (and I do) that Microsoft wasn’t particularly focused before this tablet intro, which becomes just one of many distractions.
9. How did all this work out for RIM?
10. Perhaps the saddest and most damning problem of all: it won’t work. The Surface tablet won’t catch on. You have to be all in for this sort of thing to be successful. The product has to be beautiful. It has to make people feel good. It has to be aspirational. You need to leverage trust and passion for your brand. You have to be a tremendous marketer. You need interesting apps.

Information technology professionals, who are Microsoft’s most ardent supporters, will buy this tablet. They will evangelize it to other IT people. And that will make up this tablet’s largest core of customers. If I am wrong, I will come back to this blog to admit it.

I want to close with this: I don’t want Microsoft to fail here. We need a successful Microsoft. The consumer electronics space — and business itself — is better with a successful Microsoft (just like golf, and all of sport, is better with a successful Tiger Woods). But for Microsoft to be successful, it must focus. It must innovate internally, as aggressively as possible. This does not mean making endless acquisitions and sitting on them (i.e. Skype, the Nokia partnership, the Nook stake, the Yahoo partnership). This means developing its own products and services that truly help people and make them passionate about Microsoft. When’s the last time mainstream consumers have been passionate about Microsoft? At least 10 years ago.

We need a successful Microsoft, but this tablet is not the company’s path to that success.