Microsoft Surface Pro Review, News, Rumors: Windows Tablet PC’s Price Reduced By $100, A Hint That New Models Are Coming Soon?
The Microsoft Surface Pro and its counterpart, the Surface RT, was Apple’s answer to Apple’s iPads and its main players for the tablet computing market. And amidst rumors that the new models of the Microsoft Surface Pro are in-development and may soon be released, it’s getting a $100 price cut.
Microsoft announced Monday that it is dropping the price of the 64GB Surface Pro from $899 to $799, according to ABC News. The 128GB version costs $899, and those prices are available at Microsoft’s company-owned retail outlets.
According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the company has been “seeing great worldwide success” with both the Surface RT for the past several months and said says that the Redmond tech giant is “proud to offer Surface Pro at more affordable prices.”
Other reports, however, have said that the company is in-development of a new Surface tablet, dubbed Surface Plus or Surface 2 and is now trying to unload inventory of it’s current Surface tablets.
According to Associated News, the new Surface tablet maybe in stores as soon as Christmas and will include a pre-installed version of Office 2013. It will also feature the highly anticipated wireless charging capability for the tablet.
The tech news site said that the next Surface tablets will have Intel’s new Haswell processors and may that a 7-inch edition of the Surface model maybe launched in order to compete with Apple’s iPad Mini.
Struggling sales numbers for Surface, bad reviews
But ABC News noted that based on the numbers, not as much people have purchased the company’s flagship tablet device, contrary to what Microsoft is saying. Although both gadgets contributed $863 million in revenue during the quarter to the tech company, the Redmond tech giant took a $900 million write-down due to unsold inventory and higher than expected related expense.
Reviews of both the Surface Pro and Surface RT have criticized the tablets for too many compromises, according to ABC News. Although the RT is cheaper and thinner, it runs a version of Windows called Windows RT, which doesn’t support traditional Windows programs.
The Pro version, although it provides full support to popular Windows programs and has a full version of Windows 8, is thicker and only has five hours of battery. The price for the Surface Pro was also deemed unattractive, as it is double the amount of the Surface RT.
Analysts also argue that Windows 8 itself wasn’t at all well received and has impacted the sales of the device. Microsoft aggressively marketed the tablets as two of the halo Windows 8 devices in television and billboard advertisements.
"Both products really suffered from the poor reception of Windows and even poorer reception to Windows RT," said Ross Rubin, principal analyst for Reticle Research, speaking with ABC News.
"A lot of the challenge at this point is the consumer reception to Windows 8 and Microsoft trying to make the case for something being a tablet and a PC."
Apple, on the other hand, kept its Mac laptops separate from its iPad line of tablets. Apple’s CEO Tim Cook said that combining them would be like meshing a toaster and a refrigerator.