"Asus has a trio of Windows 8 tablets on deck for the holidays, but the pricing is so high - $599 to $1299 for a hybrid - that it's going to be nearly impossible to compete in the marketplace. We were leaked Asus' holiday roadmap and the slide below tells the tale." If this is for real, Windows 8 is screwed in the tablet space. Nobody is going to buy a Windows tablet at prices higher than the iPad.
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Member since:2007-04-18
I've been to a few corporate hardware purchases and I can tell you Thom is spot on. When you purchase thousands of units, every single nickel and dime makes a huge difference in CAPEX. Lately we've been selecting laptops for a 1000-unit project. The difference in price between the two finalists was about $40 (~$600 vs. $640) and we chose to go with the cheaper one (though admittedly price was not the only deciding factor). And the machine is quite a bit more capable than even the $1000 unit from the pricing quoted for these Win8 tabs (the TF810C + dock).
If these leaked materials are accurate, I see a bad awakening for Asus in the coming months...
Member since:2009-03-17
Your example misses the point; at the end of the day most corporate purchases revolve around products to run a Microsoft OS/suite. Do they not?
If microsoft can provide a seamless integration of the surface with the windows ecosystem, then they will have some relatively big initial corporate orders. At $600 a tablet that can do most of what a laptop is used for in corporate environments (e-mail, excel/powerpoint, web stuff) really is a no brainer for a lot of corporate environments.
I am not saying that the demand will be earth shattering perhaps, but enough to give windows 8 tablets enough momentum to keep growing. Microsoft is a persistent company. It took them what? 10 years to get the desktop gui OS right, but look at the market share of Windows on the desktop.
I doubt MS are going to command the tablet
market like they do with the desktop, but brushing them off may be premature.
Member since:
2009-03-17
I assume Microsoft will be targeting the business market initially, where Windows is king. So there will be plenty of very large corporate orders for these devices.
Perhaps Thom does not understand that there may be more markets for tablet devices other than personal media consumption.