Microsoft has confirmed that it's now offering a $100 price cut for its Surface Pro tablet with one slight catch – those interested in purchasing the device, at discount, will have until August 29 to benefit from the promotional pricing. This (temporarily) reduces the total cost of the Surface Pro to $799 for the 64GB version of the tablet-laptop and $899 for the 128GB iteration.
If this routine sounds familiar, that's because Microsoft's temporary price cut comes right on the heels of a wider slash that the company took to the prices of its Surface RT tablets just last month. Surface Pro wannabe-purchasers don't get quite a good a deal now as those looking to buy the Surface RT received just a few weeks ago. Microsoft dropped the 32GB version of the Surface RT from $499 to $349 — a decrease of just over 30 percent, and cut the 64GB iteration of the tablet from $649 to 499 (down nearly 25%).
Two schools of thought emerge from the Surface price cuts. The first suggests that Microsoft's struggling tablets just haven't been selling enough, and that these cuts are the "easy button" for Microsoft to regain a little bit of its lost footing.
Or, as Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer put it at a Microsoft town hall event in late July: "We built a few more devices than we could sell." And the fiscals appear to back that statement up, as Microsoft announced that it took a $900 million hit on its recently announced fourth-quarter earnings.
"We reduced the price of Surface RT by $150 to $349 per device. As a result of this price change, as well as inventory adjustments for related parts and accessories, we recorded a $900 million charge to our income statement," said Microsoft CFO Amy Hood on the mid-July earnings call.
The second idea, a bit more optimistic, is that Microsoft is looking to clear out inventory for an eventual upgrade to a new version of the Surface RT, Surface Pro, or both tablets. Microsoft has recently hinted that some kind of update to both tablets is on the way, but it's unclear as to when, exactly, the update might hit for either – as well, what Microsoft might actually have in store for a tablet refresh or two.
It's widely assumed that Microsoft will look to stash Intel's energy-efficient Haswell processors into its Surface Pro tablet, but things get a bit murkier when one goes to ponder what Microsoft might do to the Surface RT. As we've previously reported, current rumors seem to be heading in the direction of Qualcomm – specifically, that Microsoft might be looking to stash LTE-friendly Snapdragon 800 processors into a future iteration of the Surface RT, replacing the devices' existing Tegra 3 chips from Nvidia.
Microsoft Cuts Surface Pro Tablets by $100 til End of August
