- Apr 30, 2014
- 59
- 0
- 0
Well, if they want (despite they don't say it) to sell it to people we're waiting it for use it as smartphone, they can't put a high prize. It would be at least as the competence prizes.
My guess....somewhere between £800 - 1200.
If it's anything lower than that, I'll be very pleasantly surprised.
Anything higher than that, and it'll be out of my price range for a long time
1500-2000$
Yup. Or higher. Wouldn't be surprised if they bring out a price range, from 64GB up to 256 or 500GB, although if it's Arm then at least we won't have to deal with the whole i3 vs i5 vs i7 price range crap from intel.
But frankly, if this thing has phone capabilities, unfolds into a tablet and comes packed with continuum, then we're talking about the first truly all encompassing device...one that really could replace almost every other machine.
And that could cost a helluva lot
It could in theory come with a keyboard and trackpad dock/case, for a laptop mode, and have a pipeline for an external GPU and hard drive, although ARM doesn't support eGPUs or thunderbolt.
More likely it'll just have a USB-c port, and you can use it as a PC or a tablet, or phone, so it won't quite replace every type of device. Still I see your point, if it was high quality enough, being that it could replace multiple devices, it could be justifiable if they charge more - you'd be saving money on that seperate bill you pay to upgrade your tablet, phone and desktop separately.
On the other hand, given the trend of dual screening, I'm not entirely sure people want just 1 device.
Thinking about it, a lot of the pricing strategy could simply come down to whether MS want to really push this kind of device into the mainstream market, or whether they'll play the long game and target enterprise first, in the hope that consumers eventually decide they want in on the action too.
Years ago, back in the 1990's I worked at panasonic. We were selling fax machines to the enterprise market for big money. Like, ridiculous amount. We had a lower range thermal image roller fax machine, bottom end of the tech spec sheet, selling for £800.
But then consumers wanted fax machines, and suddenly everyone was selling them. Overnight a £800 machine was in retail stores for £150.
Question is, will MS play for consumers or focus on enterprise
Usually the manufacturing costs go down a bit, and then its consumers. But it could be wise for them to take a loss at the beginning just to get the ball rolling. It would help the UWP platform, like windows on arm also will, and thus the future of windows in general.