How Much?
TechCrunch managed to catch one of those “oops, posted the web page too early” moments at Microsoft, and it seems to reveal the prices for its upcoming Surface RT tablets. Here they are, listed alongside similarly-priced iPads:
| Surface Model | Price | Similarly-priced iPad | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| 32 GB, no “Touch Cover” (cover with touch-sensitive keyboard) | $499 | 16 GB Wifi-only New iPad / 16GB Wifi + 3G iPad 2 | $519 / $549 |
| 32 GB with “Touch Cover” | $599 | 32 GB Wifi-only New iPad / 16GB Wifi + 3G New iPad | $619 / $649 |
| 64 GB with “Touch Cover” | $699 | 64 GB Wifi-only New iPad / 64GB Wifi + 3G New iPad | $719 / $849 |
As promised, these models are priced competitively against the iPad. That leaves the hurdles of coming almost three years late to the market, lack of mindshare, smaller app ecosystem, an app store that has to get its act together, developers who’ve jumped ship to other platforms, a remaining developer culture that’s got a lot to learn about UI and the fact that they’re Microsoft (the vendor whose stuff you have to use, not the vendor whose stuff you want to use). On the plus side, Surface is probably the easiest tablet to develop for; Microsoft has to convince developers of this and get them to bring their A-game when writing Surface apps.
It should be noted that these are the Windows RT models, which means they’ll only run RT applications and not any software written for previous versions of Windows. The Windows Pro tablets, slated to come out next year, will run both.
How Many?
They’re building 3 to 5 million this quarter, according to the Wall Street Journal. Once again, for comparison’s sake, Apple sold 17 million tablets last quarter. I will remind the reader that the tablet market is young, and anything can happen.
Any Ads?
Microsoft’s first TV spots for Surface were scheduled to appear last night, according to The Verge. Here’s the first one, a Stomp-inspired dance bit with lots of Touch Cover attachings and detachings, whose message is “Surface is cool”.
Microsoft is reported to be spending at least a billion dollars on the campaign to promote Windows 8, and Surface will undoubtedly be a big player. Hopefully that money will be more effectively spent; we were once told they were spending a half billion on Windows Phone 7’s campaign, with pretty sad results.
One reply on “Lots of Surface News Today”
Were those catholic school girls rockin’ out to Surface? Wow. That’s a bad, really bad commercial. It’s got good dancing and that’s abou tit. But show us the tablet and why it’s better than the competition. I barely saw the screen except a few walking fingers.
A few more of these and you can assure it Surface will be an epic fail.