Microsoft Surface Pro Specs, Price, News: Windows Tablet Gets $100 Price Cut, Reduction Caused By Bad Reviews And Low Sales

The Microsoft Surface Pro and its counterpart, the Surface RT, was Apple’s answer to Apple’s iPads and it’s main player for the tablet computing market. But after bad reviews and low sales, the Microsoft Surface Pro is 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.”

But ABC News noted that based on the numbers, not as much people have purchased the company’s flagship tablet device. Although both gadgets contributed $863 million in revenue during the quarter to the tech company, Microsoft took a $900 million write-down due to unsold inventory and higher than expected related expense.

Microsoft has not announced how many units of the tablet have sold.

The reviews on 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.

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