Microsoft Surface: The Second Coming of Motorola Xoom

The tablet market has become a very unfriendly place, not for customers per se but for all those who would like to sell one such thing, and Microsoft is about to learn that directly.

Microsoft has been seeing quite a bit of disapproval, bordering on hostility, on the part of OEMs due to its Surface tablet and its very strict Windows 8 launch permissions (or lack thereof).

Acer has even resorted to outright lambasting it, not that anyone expects its words to have much of an effect.

Thus, we cannot help but wonder how product brands will respond after the October 2012 event, especially those not included in the short list of Windows RT launch partners.

The price range that Microsoft has decided upon may become one of the primary “weapons” of those who feel that Microsoft has lost the loyalty of its OEMs.

The regular Surface should ship for $500 to $600 or more, while the Surface Pro is bound to cost $700-$1,000, and just as many Euro in Europe, since exchange rates seldom seem to have bearing on the price tags there.

Thus, everyone else shipping slates could fabricate a “Motorola XOOM” situation.

For those who don't remember, XOOM was one of the first tablets out, and while it wasn't bad, exactly, it did have too high a price for its specifications.

By the time it got a price cut or two, rivals of Motorola had already launched models advertised as much cheaper but better, placing special emphasis on Flash support (which XOOM lacked at first).

Tablet vendors may very well try to do the same to Microsoft's Surface, though it will be somewhat more difficult to pull off, as there is no large gap in feature support (like the aforementioned lack of Flash) for them to latch onto.

There are reasons for them to choose against this modus operandi of course: comparisons to XOOM didn't really help score massive sales, the same way the iPad sold massively even with every non-Apple slate supplier criticizing its lack of Flash support.

Nevertheless, Microsoft hasn't made any friends with its decision to enter the hardware business (regardless of whether or not it plans to turn itself into a closed ecosystem like Apple), so anything is possible at this point.

Via: Microsoft Surface: The Second Coming of Motorola Xoom