Ok, I will play. I have worked for a fortune 500 CE company for 20 years in Marketing, Product Planning, and Sales so I have a bit of experience in some of these matters but in no way will I claim to be an expert on the challenges and goals MS or Apple have. Having said that, EVERY company markets its products based on goals that it alone sets and understands. There are companies that value market share above all else and they will literally sell below cost to get it. There are companies that value being niche, cache brands and they will forego sales to hold quality and pricing high. And there are brands that try to market to both ends of the spectrum, often using the volume of the low end to subsidize the cost of the high end until the volume/cost curve makes the high end product profitable. Since we are all using car metaphors, I will continue the trend.
If you go to as BMW dealership and expect to buy a 7 Series for the price of a 3 series, you are not thinking clearly.
If you go to a BMW dealership and expect a 3 series to come with all of the amenities and performance of a 7 series, you are not thinking clearly.
If however you do not understand the difference even after seriously reading all of the marketing materials and website information that BMW has put out, and trying to understand them, then BMW may not thinking clearly or at least communicating poorly.
In this case we have all three situations, IMHO. We have the Surface and Surface Pro, but most of the reviewers have lumped them together and compared them to the wrong benchmarks. Imagine Car and Driver doing a comparison of the best high end luxury sedans and including the 7 series versus the VW Passat and the Honda Fit. Never happens, but the Tech press in this country is inept at worst and biased as hell at best, so the brand of the day gets all of the positive press and other brands are ignored or mistreated in some cases and mis-reviewed in others. The reality is that the Surface is a value based selling proposition- it belongs in the Android Tablet and IPAD category. It is a 3 Series. The Pro is a unique beast. It is a LAPTOP/Tablet. It is a 7 series. And yes, you pay for convenience and size in tech, so it is correctly positioned with a premium over some basic tablets and basic laptops.
Now, the fact that MS has not corrected the reviewers or found a way to more clearly communicate these differences is something we can fault them for, again, IMHO.
However, value is very subjective. So this brings me to the point Oion makes- if you bought it, you valued it. PERIOD. I looked at all tablets and laptops and concluded that the S2P was best FOR ME. Others have done the same. Whether enough of us are out here for MS profit forecasts remains to be seen and none of us can judge MS without knowing their goals and objectives.
What needs to happen is for the tone of these discussions to change- just because you think I wasted my money does not give you license to call my intelligence or judgement into question. Especially if you are on this site daily trolling us. If you are here, and you are constantly complaining, than either you own one and you are having buyers remorse- return the device and move on. Or you do not own one and you get off on tweaking those who do- get a life and move on.
If you go to as BMW dealership and expect to buy a 7 Series for the price of a 3 series, you are not thinking clearly.
If you go to a BMW dealership and expect a 3 series to come with all of the amenities and performance of a 7 series, you are not thinking clearly.
If however you do not understand the difference even after seriously reading all of the marketing materials and website information that BMW has put out, and trying to understand them, then BMW may not thinking clearly or at least communicating poorly.
In this case we have all three situations, IMHO. We have the Surface and Surface Pro, but most of the reviewers have lumped them together and compared them to the wrong benchmarks. Imagine Car and Driver doing a comparison of the best high end luxury sedans and including the 7 series versus the VW Passat and the Honda Fit. Never happens, but the Tech press in this country is inept at worst and biased as hell at best, so the brand of the day gets all of the positive press and other brands are ignored or mistreated in some cases and mis-reviewed in others. The reality is that the Surface is a value based selling proposition- it belongs in the Android Tablet and IPAD category. It is a 3 Series. The Pro is a unique beast. It is a LAPTOP/Tablet. It is a 7 series. And yes, you pay for convenience and size in tech, so it is correctly positioned with a premium over some basic tablets and basic laptops.
Now, the fact that MS has not corrected the reviewers or found a way to more clearly communicate these differences is something we can fault them for, again, IMHO.
However, value is very subjective. So this brings me to the point Oion makes- if you bought it, you valued it. PERIOD. I looked at all tablets and laptops and concluded that the S2P was best FOR ME. Others have done the same. Whether enough of us are out here for MS profit forecasts remains to be seen and none of us can judge MS without knowing their goals and objectives.
What needs to happen is for the tone of these discussions to change- just because you think I wasted my money does not give you license to call my intelligence or judgement into question. Especially if you are on this site daily trolling us. If you are here, and you are constantly complaining, than either you own one and you are having buyers remorse- return the device and move on. Or you do not own one and you get off on tweaking those who do- get a life and move on.
It's not that your opinions about the pricing aren't valid; it's that they're irrelevant.
While you let that sink in, I'll explain with a question:
"Is an Audi too expensive?"
You will answer "yes," and you'd be wrong. Your correct answer should have been "I can't afford it." Once you figure out the difference, the microeconomics of price-profit-value-supply-demand should become clear: You have no product rights. You don't need it. You don't deserve it. The purchase is a privilege. What's outlandish to you is merely you whining that you can't afford something. Others who can afford it and value something enough to pay the price become part of the microeconomic cycle, because the price matches the value at that point. Items priced at the upper tiers of whatever bell curve will naturally move slowly. However: Microsoft's Pro sales were positive and they had trouble keeping up with demand, just as they are with Pro 2. Therefore, looking at the supply-demand aspect, the Pro isn't too expensive. The RT line has far too many other variables involved to ever say only "the price is too high."
Then consider this: What sort of fool buys an Audi and then comes to the Audi forums to complain that the prices are too high and they should lower them to get more market share? That's not how it works. The smart consumer buys or doesn't buy and moves on. It's up to the company to decide how to proceed on the macro scale.
End-users like us shouldn't be obsessed about this sort of thing, only with how a purchase is performing to our needs/expectations. Everything else is gravy.
