After a price cut to its Surface RT tablet and reports of modest sales last month, The Verge is reporting that Microsoft has cut the price of its Surface Pro tablet by $100 through August 29. The price cut applies to both the 64 GB and 128 GB versions of the tablet, bringing down the price of those models to $799 and $899 respectively.
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In July, Microsoft filed its annual Form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealing that its Surface lineup of tablets had garnered only $853 million in revenue for the company, which is less than the $900 million writedown the company took for the Surface RT. While Microsoft did not reveal how many Surface units it sold, GeekWire estimated that it sold approximately 1.7 million units by the end of June.
Last month, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told employees at an internal Microsoft town hall meeting that the company had "built more devices than [Microsoft] could sell" in reference to slowing Surface sales. The company has been heavily marketing Windows 8 tablets recently, pitting different tablets against Apple's iPad in a series of ads that highlight the iPad's inability to multitask and its lack of built-in productivity software.
Despite the price cuts, Microsoft has suggested that new versions of both the Surface Pro and Surface RT are in the works, along with a number of new accessories.
Top Rated Comments
(View all)No one cares about Microsoft Products, its not even in the same League as the iPad... also anyone who quotes this and tells me to stop moaning.. go cry to your moms.. if you don't have moms then to bad..
I was under the impression you had to be over 13 to make a forum account. I guess I was wrong.
Microsoft is doomed.
What? Come on, this is MacRumors, therefore it's Apple that is doomed!
/sarcasm
:D
I can agree with you on the battery life. It's the major reason why I haven't considered picking one up for myself, even with the stylus and digitizer tempting me.
But the keyboard? You don't have to use the smartcover if you don't want to. Why not just use any number of bluetooth keyboards? Then you could set the tablet whereever you want, and type from your lap no problem. I did that with my iPad just a couple days back, actually. I set it down on a table off to my left, had my keyboard right in front of me, and typed away. It was almost like having an itty bitty portable iMac in a way. I could easily see me doing the same thing with the Pro.
I understand most of these shortcomings could be handled one way or another. Fundamentally MS was not able to approach this correctly and in my opinion that is mostly because of win 8. It is cumbersome to use on a non touch screen. This has generally translated to bad reviews, among other issues. While win 8 has major improvements it is poorly executed. Some of this is in the works with the upcoming service pack, but for the love of God, why did they remove the start button?? I switched to a Mac because of win 8 and I know I'm not the only one.
When they reduce the price to 20%, I'll buy a dozen for target practice. There's a great app called "Bull's Eye" that draws a perfect target.
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Back in 2007 I would have probably bought one, but just like with my Pocket PC, for which I spent over $1700 in units and accessories that have become practically obsolete, I'm afraid the same is going to happen to the Surface.
Something just didn't click-in properly (could that be the Metro interface?) and it's not getting much attention.
I have a feeling the surface will follow the path of the "kin" and the "Zune". Microsoft has a habit of introducing ill researched products into the market and killing them off. They will leave the tablet marketplace in a few years. As someone else posted, you can get a MacBook Air for the price, which can do so much more. It also doesn't help that the metro interface isn't all that great to use. And the classic Microsoft desktop doesn't suit a tablet.
when you can get a Macbook Air for the same original price and it has PCI SSD, can run Win7 or Win8 in addition to OSX, has a better warranty and more so with AppleCare, is built better.