by Microsoft’s Surface tablets provokes ‘sense of betrayal’ among Windows PC assemblers
[Via MacDailyNews]
“Microsoft Corp kept its personal computer partners largely in the dark about its plans to launch a competing tablet computer, with some long-time collaborators learning of the new gadget only days before its unveiling, according to people with knowledge of the matter,” Poornima Gupta and Lee Chyen Yee report for Reuters.
“The secrecy that shrouded the Surface tablet risks alienating Microsoft’s hardware partners, and marks a departure from the software company’s tradition of working closely with hardware companies to test and fine-tune every new product,” Gupta and Yee report. “It also underscores how Microsoft is starting to take pages from Apple Inc’s playbook…”
MacDailyNews Take: Starting? Are they forking kidding? Reuters’ amnestic duo should investigate what Microsoft has been doing for the last 25+ years. “Starting.” Sheesh.
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Microsoft will make its own tablets but for others making a tablet based on MS operating system will have to pay at least $80 for the license. For a roughly $500 item, that is a huge amount. It could represent all of the profit from such a device and give MS a nice advantage.
No wonder makers are not happy. And if it cuts into the PC market, fewer people will be buying their computers. Not happy time.
And here is a nice explanation of why MS is doing this – to protect the profit margins from Windows and Office.
