

Windows 8 tablet PC makers: We can't compete with the iPad's price - mrsebastian
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/129543-windows-8-tablet-pc-makers-we-cant-compete-with-the-ipads-price

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pdubs
>Apple effectively gives iOS away (it’s a hardware company, after all), and
Amazon gets Android for free

While I get what the author's saying here, it's a bit disingenuous to call
either of those situations "free". Both companies invest nontrivial amounts of
money into their OS. Apple develops their in-house OS, and Android is a "some
assembly required" product.

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electrograv
It only used the word "free" for Amazon's use of Android, which is factually
accurate. It said that Apple gives iOS away, which again is an accurate
statement. It doesn't seem disingenuous to me; in fact the wording implies
that Apple is indeed "giving away" real value.

~~~
pdubs
The article cites the Windows licensing price (~$90), then goes on to say how
it would be "hard pushed to compete" at $10, then states Apple giving iOS for
free and Amazon getting Android for free. The contextual implication is that
Apple and Amazon pay ~$0 (certainly <$10) for their OSs.

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nextparadigms
I knew this would happen, but nobody seemed to believe it. If they can't even
compete with the ARM versions because of the cost of Windows, imagine how much
more expensive the Intel tablets will be - and they probably won't even
support any retina-like resolution (definitely not on Atom).

Also keep in mind that the costs to manufacturers usually double at retail
($300 components - $600 product, etc). So $100 on a Windows 8 license to
manufacturers, will be about $200 added to the tablet's price at retail.

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daulex
While licensing (without a doubt) is a big issue, I think the infrastructure
that Apple have in place for manufacturing and sourcing of materials is second
to none.

This is only possible due to forward thinking people and a ridiculous amount
of demand, the two together mean bulk buying prices available to them only.

The competition will catch up at some point, but I fear that it might require
a couple huge mergers for this to happen.

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nivertech
I think the author failed to understand one thing:

there are will be 2 kinds of Win8 tablets: x86 and ARM based.

The x86 tablets are essentially full-blown PCs, to which you can connect mouse
and keyboard and they compete with netbooks, laptops and PCs, so the Windows
license for them will be probably $90+.

The license for Win8 on ARM tablets will be much cheaper ($10-$30), because
they compete with iPads and Android tablets.

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richworks
From one of the comments :

"there will be no legacy Windows applications retrocompatibilty"

Is this true? If it is, then this is a deal breaker. The only reason I've been
waiting so long to buy a Windows tablet is because I assumed it would be
backwards compatible with my desktop applications(of my Win7 machine). If what
the comment above says is true, then I guess it will be either an Android
tablet or the iPad..

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untog
It's my understanding that this was always the case- if the tablet is ARM-
based, then it's not going to be able to run legacy x86 apps. Not to mention
the UI problems. The good news is that it will be much easier for developers
to port from x86 Win7 to ARM/x86 Win8 than it would be to make an iPad/Android
version of their application.

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taligent
So true.

Microsoft actually has a great "developer story" to tell if they can pull all
their pieces together. The idea that you could trivially port your .NET apps
across to tablets is very compelling. Throw in the ability to have apps
running on a future XBox could be a game changer as well.

It's when you look at everything they have you realise that it would be stupid
to ever rule Microsoft out.

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iharris
I can really feel the irony here - one of the biggest gripes of Apple critics
was the price of their products. It'll be interesting to see if things have
turned around.

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taligent
I don't know where you've been the last 10 years.

The iPod was the first wave of Apple devices where the price was actually
cheaper than the competition. Then that trend continued with the MacBook Airs
and iPads. Even the iMacs/MacBooks are very competitive.

~~~
betterth
The iPod may have beat the competition in the beginning, but after a couple of
years it quickly remained the either the most expensive or close to the most
expensive device in it's class.

Apple notoriously only sold the shuffle under $100 while many competitors
offered devices with dramatically more space and screens for under $100.

By the 2007 era and the beginning of keeping your music on your phone, it
would have been utterly disingenuous to call the iPod "cheap" or anything
close to it.

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darksaga
For once I'd really like to see Microsoft position its product as a high end
product instead of always trying to undercut everybody on price.

If they think their product is better, then sell it as such. Actually say your
product is better and therefore, it's going to cost more.

~~~
iharris
Unless Microsoft will produce their own hardware for a Win8 tablet, I think we
are going to see a whole slew of tablet models with varying (and sometimes
dubious) build quality. Like it or not, the iPad is pretty well put-together -
I think that the tablet manufacturers are really going to have to scramble to
compete on the hardware front.

I actually think that Win8 has some potential as a tablet OS, although my
experience with the developer preview on a PC was a little underwhelming.

~~~
AUmrysh
The standardization of iOS devices is what makes them so easy to use and
develop for. Microsoft has done a good job of making Windows behave in a
standard manner on diverse hardware configurations on desktops and laptops, so
we can hope that WM8 will be equally standardized across different hardware.
That would at least give them an advantage over android, and if they don't
drop hardware support at certain versions they might be able to take over
slowly when the cost of WM8 tablets drop below the cost of an iPad.

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DanielSwinkels
I think at this stage of the game if Microsoft has any hope of penetrating the
market they pretty much have to subsidize or make WinRT licenses free for
approved devices rather than charge for it and if that's successful recoup the
losses off the market.

Apple seems to certainly be in a position where they could do this and
absolutely crush the competition, they must just not feel threatened with the
competing products available today

~~~
latch
The problem is deeper than just money. There's a branding issue. There's an
app issue. There's a quality issue.

You need to magically fix all three of these, plus address the pricing
difficulties. Good luck.

~~~
michael37
Free Windows! We've been waiting since Win95 for that.

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wslh
It doesn't seem right. If I go to
<http://s.dealextreme.com/search/android+tablet> and search for chinese
android tables I can find competitive prices there, some at ~ USD 100, so
adding the license tag will not change that much.

"In China We Trust"

~~~
sp332
None of those can run Win8, and certainly they can't run Win8 + applications
people would want.

~~~
kyriakos
you'll be surprised what chinese have achieved. there is currently on sale
chinese tablets with dual core cpu and quad core gpu, 1gb ram, 16gb storage,
10inch IPS screens and all bells and whistles (like HDMI output, SD card
support, dual USB ports etc) with 7+ hours of battery life for 215 USD..

its all a matter of a win8 RT driver for the particular SoC.

run a search for "Rockchip RK3066" SoC (in particular check for a tablet
called R2000 or Cube U30GT.

I already own the single core version of that tablet and i assure u the build
quality, screen etc are in par with ipad2.

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stefanve
Wouldn't it be possible that it is 90-100 Taiwan dollar instead of US dollar.
than the license cost is 3.4 US dollar. It seems to me that it would be
suicide of MS to command such a high price for its tablet OS. It would make
the tablet as expensive as its desktop OS. Not a great strategy to conquer the
"iPad market". A pricing akin to windows mobile would seem to be more logical.

~~~
nextparadigms
No. Having to charge $100 even for the bare-bones/no-legacy support Windows 8
ARM version is exactly why they did this instead of using WP7 and expanding it
for tablets. Because then they would've had to charge only $15 for it, or
maybe a little more, but that's about it. It's still a huge mistake for
Microsoft to do this though, when Android is free.

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joenathan
Android isn't free if you want the Play Store/Google Maps/Gmail, not to
mention the effort needed to write the drivers for the hardware.

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gouranga
Are we talking ARM or Intel. If its the latter, I expect the price to be
higher as Intel windows 8 tablets are an order of magnitude more useful than
an iPad. ARM? No chance.

Either that or they don't want to compete with the iPad...

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nextparadigms
It says ARM in the beginning of the article. I expect Intel ones to be even
more expensive, and I don't think there's a market for a $800 Atom tablet that
runs like a netbook (the Core i5 Samsung one they showed earlier was around
$1200, and it didn't even have retina display).

The iPad has what now - 150,000 touch-optimized apps? Windows 8 x86 has - 100?
What are you doing to do with all the unoptimized and sluggish apps on a x86
tablet that will have half the battery life of iPad or Android tablets at
best, and costs twice as much?

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gouranga
Correction - iPad has 149,900 shit apps and 100 good ones as does every
platform.

Also if its a problem for you personally, just buy a laptop :)

~~~
nextparadigms
You made your own correction irrelevant when you stated that this happens on
every platform, which is true. But that's how great apps appear on a platform,
and how great niche apps come to be born on the platform, too.

You can't say "there's an app for that" on a platform with 100 or even 1000
apps totally, even if you have the "top apps" in there.

