Is SurfacePro going to have to cut their price?

[mitchellvii]

I think so.

HP is now offering an i7 ultrabook with a 15.6" 1080p IPS touch screen and 500 gb HDD with 32 gb mSSD for $30 less than a 64gb SP with keyboard and $139 less than the 128 gb model. That is how they say in the PC marketplace, pricing pressure.

I predict a $200 price drop in the SP (probably in the form of an included keyboard or maybe a year of Office 365) between now and the holidays. We have already seen SP's at giveaway prices at these conferences.

I do not believe there will be a Surface Pro II. Why not? Better question is why does the marketplace need one? Cheaper and smaller Surface RTs, yes, Surface Pro II? No. The SP was a nice early adopter (best athlete) device at the time it came out, but can it really compete with the ultra-slim, ultra fast, ultra HD hybrid devices coming out from MS's hardware partners in the next 6 months? Unless the SP is going to have a 4k HD screen, Haswell, much better battery life and a backlit keyboard, MS better just save their time and money.

The future for the Surface is 8" RT devices or maybe at best, Atom devices running Windows 8.

 

[Igor]

I think so.

HP is now offering an i7 ultrabook with a 15.6" 1080p IPS touch screen and 500 gb HDD with 32 gb mSSD for $30 less than a 64gb SP with keyboard and $139 less than the 128 gb model. That is how they say in the PC marketplace, pricing pressure.

Sure but have we not always paid a price premium for portability? The SP is still a unique (maybe niche) product in many ways. I don't think so much pressure comes from larger ultrabooks/laptops. Also the SP was never good value for money when you look at specs vs. price.

I predict a $200 price drop in the SP (probably in the form of an included keyboard or maybe a year of Office 365) between now and the holidays. We have already seen SP's at giveaway prices at these conferences.

Quite possible, but aren't such discounts almost expected for a device that's been around for so long? For non-Apple devices anyway.

I do not believe there will be a Surface Pro II. Why not? Better question is why does the marketplace need one? Cheaper and smaller Surface RTs, yes, Surface Pro II? No. The SP was a nice early adopter (best athlete) device at the time it came out, but can it really compete with the ultra-slim, ultra fast, ultra HD hybrid devices coming out from MS's hardware partners in the next 6 months? Unless the SP is going to have a 4k HD screen, Haswell, much better battery life and a backlit keyboard, MS better just save their time and money.

The future for the Surface is 8" RT devices or maybe at best, Atom devices running Windows 8.

I haven't really seen any planned devices from manufacturers that can do what the Surface does, for me anyway. Have you seen anything interesting?

Also I'm not sure why anyone would be pushing 4k screens on devices of this size. It'll be a struggle for battery life and a struggle for the video card. Meanwhile there's hardly any benefit from the high resolution on screens this small. Slightly sharper text? Who cares. I'd rather have the battery life and performance.

Personally I hope you're wrong. I'd love to see a SP II. The current one is so good it just needs a few minor tweaks and it'd be just about perfect for me. Not to mention the fact that MS could always bring something fresh to the table which would spur on manufacturers to innovate themselves once again.

 

[mitchellvii]

Any competing devices? Dell XPS 11 and Samsung ATIV Q to name a few. Both have Haswell, larger better screens, backlit keyboards, under 3 pounds, active digitizer pens and longer battery life. The ATIV Q will even run Android as well.

If there is an SP II MS will have to spend a lot of money doing MAJOR upgrades to compete. Considering they just lost a billion dollars on the SRT, I don't see that happening. Smaller, lighter RT's or Atom Surface that's it. Surface Pro line ends here.

 

[EMINENT]

It's already in the pipeline.

 

[dougpaw57]

I think so.

The future for the Surface is 8" RT devices or maybe at best, Atom devices running Windows 8.

I think you missed the boat on these ideas. If you've tried an Atom processor with Windows 8, you would find it clunky and slow. And if you listen to what most people are saying, Windows RT will be dead fairly soon. I think the Pro is a great tool, it replaced my TF700 tablet and my Zenbook. 8" tablets are too small for productivity, the Surface Pro is a good laptop replacement.

 

[mitchellvii]

I think you missed the boat on these ideas. If you've tried an Atom processor with Windows 8, you would find it clunky and slow. And if you listen to what most people are saying, Windows RT will be dead fairly soon. I think the Pro is a great tool, it replaced my TF700 tablet and my Zenbook. 8" tablets are too small for productivity, the Surface Pro is a good laptop replacement.

Don't you know? I always end up being right. You'll learn.

Intel is replacing the Atom with a much better chip. RT at the right price point in a smaller tablet makes sense.

Do not confuse the fact YOU like the Surface Pro with what can make money for MS. Now that MS's hardware partners are finally coming out with some high-end W8 hardware, why would MS want to lose more money trying to compete against them? I am telling you what, no matter what they say publicly, MS never wanted to be in the hardware business. They only created the SP in the first place to showcase Windows 8 and motivate their hardware partners. It did both and now it's work here is done.

MS sells hardware for the same reason Amazon sells hardware - to push their main line of business. When your first foray into selling hardware loses a billion bucks you get a new perspective real fast.

The Surface's future is smaller cheaper. Their days in the high end hybrid space are numbered.

 

[ultra99]

So I shouldn't get the Pro now and wait for other manufacturers coming up with a similar device?

 

[Igor]

Any competing devices? Dell XPS 11 and Samsung ATIV Q to name a few. Both have Haswell, larger better screens, backlit keyboards, under 3 pounds, active digitizer pens and longer battery life. The ATIV Q will even run Android as well.

If there is an SP II MS will have to spend a lot of money doing MAJOR upgrades to compete. Considering they just lost a billion dollars on the SRT, I don't see that happening. Smaller, lighter RT's or Atom Surface that's it. Surface Pro line ends here.

Yeah I've seen both of those, didn't much like them. The XPS 11 is just a Lenovo Yogo with a permanent touch cover style (flat) keyboard.

The ATIV Q is big and heavy. I'm already wishing for a lighter/thinner SP. Running Android is interesting but I feel like it misses the point a little. I don't really want to have to reboot into another OS all the time depending on what I'm doing. That's the whole point of Windows 8 isn't it? Also the keyboard on this looks very cramped, small keys, no function keys, etc.

I'm not sure where you found that both of these have backlit keyboards, I couldn't find that at all. Any links?

For me I look at it like this, if you want a laptop that can sometimes be a tablet then buy devices like the ones above. If you want a tablet that can sometimes be a laptop, get the SP. At the moment, I'm firmly in the latter camp and I'm hoping a few others are too because I'd love to see a SP II or at least some more devices from other manufacturers with a similar design philosophy.

 

[Padron26]

So I shouldn't get the Pro now and wait for other manufacturers coming up with a similar device?

That is always up to you. If I didn't have one now, I would still get one tomorrow. Because it is a useful tool for me.
there will always be something newer/cooler within a few quarters.

 

[CrippsCorner]

It's already in the pipeline.


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Well, you can't deny this mitchellvii! Maybe an update doesn't mean Surface Pro 2 exactly, but it certainly means something... ultimately no one knows if you'll be right or wrong at this point, but as others have said, I sure hope you're wrong. Surface Pro is a great device and a few tweaks here and there and it will be killer. Better advertising needed of course, but that's never been Microsoft's strong point.

 

[mlknez]

Microsoft did many things right and many things wrong with the Surface line. The RT would have been a huge success if they would have gotten rid of the need for a desktop and designed all of their apps to be native, touch, non-desktop apps. They should have then priced it at $199 until they killed the iPad (like they did with MS Access for $99 until the competition died, remember paradox, dbase, knowledgeman, framework, enable, etc.). The SurfacePro is a great product, but they should have added the ability to change out battery, SSD, RAM and made it waterproof. They again should have priced it at $599 with keyboard until the competition died.

The differentiator would have been desktop vs no desktop (easy for even Apple users). They will continue to improve both lines as they now realize that it is imperative to maintain their ecosystem of software.

 

[Igor]

Microsoft did many things right and many things wrong with the Surface line. The RT would have been a huge success if they would have gotten rid of the need for a desktop and designed all of their apps to be native, touch, non-desktop apps. They should have then priced it at $199 until they killed the iPad (like they did with MS Access for $99 until the competition died, remember paradox, dbase, knowledgeman, framework, enable, etc.). The SurfacePro is a great product, but they should have added the ability to change out battery, SSD, RAM and made it waterproof. They again should have priced it at $599 with keyboard until the competition died.

The differentiator would have been desktop vs no desktop (easy for even Apple users). They will continue to improve both lines as they now realize that it is imperative to maintain their ecosystem of software.

So they should've made a SP with more openings, kept the ports, size, weight and everything else and then somehow made it waterproof? Oh and then also made it half the price thereby ensuring that they don't even recover the cost of R&D and possibly also ship the units at a loss?

These comments are not at all grounded in reality. If they had done what you suggested, we would most certainly not ever be seeing a SP II, nor probably most of Microsoft's execs.

Also you can't compare sales of software like MS Access to hardware sales. Hardware has a much higher per unit cost. Even at $99 MS was likely still making a profit on Access sales.