Rumor has it that Microsoft is planning to price its Windows RT-powered Surface tablet at a highly-competitive price point of $199. Unless Microsoft is willing to take a serious dive on each tablet sold, this sort of pricing is never going to be achieved.
There’s been a great deal of mystery and speculation surrounding how Microsoft plans to price its Surface range of tablets. The information vacuum from Redmond has led to all sorts of rumors and speculation, from crazy pricing to this latest low-cost prediction.
This latest pricing prediction comes from an anonymous tipster via Engadget.
Microsoft has remained coy about Surface pricing. There was a statement from Microsoft early on saying that they were “expected to be competitive with a comparable ARM tablet or Intel ultrabook-class PC,” but nothing more concrete.
But what exactly is competitive for an ARM tablet these days?
As much as I’d like to see a Windows RT-powered Surface tablet sell for $199, unless Microsoft is going to heavily subsidize the tablet, it’s just not going to happen. While tablets such as the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 have conditioned buyers to think of tablets — but not the iPad — as cheap, these are a different animal to Microsoft’s Surface tablets.
The scant information we have about these tablets would suggest to me that the hardware is going to be significantly better than what Amazon or Google have packed into their tablets. Even with the best will in the world, I can’t see Microsoft getting the bill or materials for this device to under $250. To be honest, I’ll be surprised if the bill of materials comes in at under $300.
Microsoft could take the bold step and decide to subsidize the Surface with the idea of getting them into the hands of as many people as possible, but even this could be a massive gamble. Not only might the move further upset Microsoft’s hardware partners, but any hopes the company may have of clawing back the subsidy…
Read more: ZDNet
