Microsoft Surface for Windows RT tablet coming October 26th for $199? | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft Surface for Windows RT tablet coming October 26th for $199?

engadget.com

19 pointsaespinoza9 comments

As a commenter on Engadget pointed out:

Engadget - You linked to an article at CNET, but there I only read: 'Microsoft may consider maintaining a price gap for its Surface products to give hardware partners some competitive breathing room' [..] "Wang said that a Surface tablet priced at $199 would have a big impact" [..] Indeed, Surface pricing is a mystery.

You see, they said quite the opposite of what you mentioned in your article. CNET says: MS considers selling the Surface tablet at a normal price, (maybe $400-$600) so Acer, Lenovo, ... have a chance to compete against it. They won't subsidize it, else they only hurt themself, and in the end MS will be the only Windows RT tablet manufacturers, because Acer, Lenovo will ditch Windows RT because they can't compete with subisidized prices.

$200 seems low, but that might would it take to build marketshare today. Plus, Microsoft has experience selling their hardware at a loss with the XBox. I wonder how Apple would react to this.

With the XBox, Microsoft had the biggest war chest in the space. That gave them the advantage of being more free to sell at a loss than their competitors.

This time around, Apple has both market dominance and the bigger war chest. That's going to make it harder to pull off the same game.

The difference being, Microsoft has a history of slashing prices below cost. Apple does not, and it would be difficult to predict that they would start anytime soon. Apple makes their money on status and luxury, not on volume sales. Microsoft has no problem being a commodity, whereas Apple would never utter that word.

I am a bit skeptical about the price. MS already said that Surface RT will be comparatively priced to similar tablets -like the iPad/Asus Transformer etc. These sell for ~$500. I would LOVE it if it actually comes for $200 but it's highly doubtful.

Garbage and blog spam.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57491529-92/dont-price-surf...

You call out Engadget for blogspam, then link to an article that says this

"Acer chairman JT Wang commented publicly on Thursday that Microsoft is seeking ways to create a price chasm between its Surface tablet and competing products from PC makers, according to a Friday report in Taipei-based Digitimes."

and links to this

http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20120809PD216.html

which seems to be the original source of the information?

Oops you're right.

At this price all the windows enthusiasts would queue up to buy at least 3 pieces at a time for themselves, leaving microsoft without enough manufacturing capacity to reach the audience they're really gunning for: John-Doe-oh-well-I-guess-I'll-buy-an-iPad-then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com