Microsoft recently unveiled its Windows 8 tablet, dubbed ‘Surface’, to the general public. It has garnered a whole lot of attention for being Microsoft’s maiden effort in the hardware sector.
There’s no doubt that the Redmond company desperately wants to break Apple Inc.’s stranglehold on the tablet market (thanks to its line of iPads), but Google’s subsequent Nexus 7 tablet announcement (which is the search giant’s first foray into hardware too) has queered the pitch further.
Recent sources for Bloomberg indicate that Microsoft will be making the Surface tablet WiFi only, at least in the initial phase of its existence. The decision is said to be linked primarily with Microsoft trying to keep the Surface tablet’s price down.
Apple notably offers WiFi only and WiFi + 4G/3G versions of its iPad, so the Microsoft Surface may not be alone in the market with this approach. However, practically all Android tablets have cellular radios. Hence, despite the larger size of the WiFi only tablet market, customers considering alternatives for the ubiquitous iPad may be discouraged by the lack of 3G or LTE in the Surface.
What doesn’t help matters is that the last major tablet to come in an exclusively WiFi flavor was the Blackberry Playbook. Its enormous failure may not have been solely related to the lack of a cellular radio, but if things don’t go well for the Surface initially, the lack of cellular data may just be considered a major flaw, just like it was in the Playbook.
[via Bloomberg]
