The price of Microsoft's new Surface tablet was recently revealed (or leaked, I'm not sure how official it was) to be $499, and the device was released today. That's $499 without the highly touted keyboard cover and the smallest amount of storage. I'm not going to say this is a bad price point, the Surface has many features which the iPad doesn't come near to offering (like USB ports) at about the same price. The problem for Microsoft, though, is that this may not fit the reason why people buy tablets.
Buying a tablet or a new smartphone is buying into an entire ecosystem. Apple's "there's an app for that" marketing campaign demonstrates that people care what a device can do. Not necessarily what it's capable-hardware wise especially-of doing, but what they're setup and already ready to do. There might be many in the Linux community that enjoy writing their own software, but when it comes to consumer electronics they're a minority. A new tablet or smartphone needs to be competitive in the app market. Google was playing catch up with android but managed to rapidly increase their available apps by creating an open market.
"But surely Microsoft doesn't have that problem, there's years worth of windows programs, right?" some of you may be saying. The answer is, wrong. At least not on this Surface. The other one does. The five hundred dollar Surface is the one running windows RT, which only runs the "modern" (I really wish Microsoft had showed some spine and stood by the metro moniker) style apps. These apps are full screen, launched from a grid, and ultimately not that different from the way every other tablet and smartphone operating system works. And there's isn't that many of them. The Surface RT includes Office 2013 when you buy it. If your an office fanatic this could sell the Surface, but I don't think that's what people are using tablets for.
Tablets aren't for productivity, they're generally recreational. Maybe Microsoft is tapping into the market in a new way, but if they're not they're selling a product for the same price with a weaker app selection. How will windows RT do for running movies from amazon? Netflix? Youtube? Hulu? How well will windows work to play music from your favorite service? If the answer to any of these isn't as well or better than their competitors it's a tick against Microsoft and the Surface.
The other Surface, the Surface Pro, will be better as it'll be running a full fledged version of windows 8. But this confusion is what could be truly deadly for Microsoft. An average consumer walks into buy their Surface, figures they'll get the cheapest one because they're just using if for fun, and then is locked in with a device that doesn't run windows like they're used to. They'll be aggravated and angry. They'll say, "Why's it called windows if it's not really windows!?" And then if they can't find "an app for that" thing they want to do it'll further strain their patience with their brand new Surface. They probably won't be happy if they go back to Microsoft store saying their new Surface can't do what they thought it could and an associate replies with, "Oh to do that you need the Surface Pro."
The only thing I can tell for sure is that Microsoft is taking a gamble with the Surface. It might work out great, creating a really mobile, tablet style device that also works great for productivity and business applications. The Surface might just end up being your real "all in one" device. The other distinct possibility, though, is that the Surface ends up angering consumers. With Microsoft behind in the mobile market and facing stiff competition from Apple and Google in winning the hearts and minds of future users things could be very bad if this gamble doesn't pay off.
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