Microsoft is in problems with their “light” tablets called Surface RT, they confessed they almost lost 1 billion dollars and that they over-produced a lot of them. To try to mitigate the problem they just lowered the price tag in USD 100 offering it at USD 349, unfortunately this wont probably work for them either.
Why the Windows Surface RT didn’t work
– Its confusing, people thought they could just run their Windows software on it, but they cant! Windows RT is a totally independent operating system, so standard Windows applications wont work on it.
– There are very few apps developed for Windows RT and its not attractive for developers to release versions of their apps for this platform when iOS and Android have almost 97% of the market. The iOS and Android stores have 1 million apps.
Microsoft Options
– Really dump the price to get rid of all the stock to something like USD 199 and DON’T produce any more. Declare the failure of the product.
– Donate a big part of the Surface RT´s to schools all over the world, specially on developing countries, offer it as the OLPC from Microsoft at a very low price or even for free, include office with it to evangelize the youth with Word, Excel, Skype, etc.
– Release a full Microsoft Office version for iOS devices and recover all the money you lost on the Windows RT project. Its almost a fact that a full stable version of Office for iOS at an attractive price like USD 10 or even USD 20 (for the whole package) will become into the best selling app of the Apple Store in a couple of days. People would be happy and will start to share the love about Microsoft again. But…be sure to make it right, and be prepared to support the product accordingly, otherwise you will get the opposite results.
– If you want to continue on the Tablet business focus on offering a light version of a standard Windows version so that all apps remain compatible with the device. Offer an attractive price for this product and flexibility.
– Hire me , I can help you avoid these type of mistakes in the future 🙂