Surface 3 can be even cheaper w/o digitizer screen?

[Tsang Fai]

Anyone has idea the manufacturing cost of the Surface 3 digitizer screen (supporting N-trig stylus)??

Some people are not going to use the Surface Pen and hence a screen with digitizer is just a waste of money - they just need a normal touch screen, which should further reduce the price of Surface 3.

I think Microsoft should consider releasing another version of Surface 3 without digitizer at all. It is still a good news to those non-pen users if the price can be reduced by, say USD 50.

Surface 1 & 2 also don't have digitizer screen. Some people are satisfied enough with taking notes by on-screen keyboard + fingers (although writing/drawing with fingers looks ugly).

 

[HeyCori]

Well Microsoft owns N-trig so it's not an issue of licensing costs.

Microsoft reportedly buys Surface Pro 3 pen maker N-trig | Windows Central

And I doubt taking it out would dramatically reduce the cost. If anything, Microsoft should be giving us the pen for free.

 

[xandros9]

Honestly I think the increased logistics complexity brought on by adding another non-pen model will quickly cancel out any costs saved.

 

[3earnhardt3]

NO, NO, NO! You can't have consumer confusion, people do not know diddly squat about digitizers and would buy the non pen version expecting the pen to work. Surface=pen, there is no going back. If you want cheap there are hundreds of other models to choose from.