Steve Ballmer may have said a few months back that Microsoft had actually ordered more Surface RT units than it could sell, but boy, the folks who purchased the tablet on discounted prices this past week are not complaining. Not one bit.
Redmond and partners launched a whole bunch of special deals on Black Friday, but the most popular one by far seems to be the 32GB Surface RT slate for $199.
This new report published by DigiTimes (no less) claims that the original Surface RT along with the Retina iPad Mini enjoyed terrific success on Black Friday — both devices sold in high volumes at all retailers that offered the slate at this special price.
Microsoft is yet to offer a statement on this, but considering the company wanted nothing more than to clear out the remaining inventories, it is easy to imagine the technology titan being pleased with all this.
The Surface RT is a historic device for the company, of course.
It was the Redmond’s first ever tablet, and launched alongside Windows 8 on October 26, 2012. Running by the company’s modern operating platform, the slate is powered by an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor. It can obviously be upgraded to Windows RT 8.1 for free.
But at $199, this is an absolute steal considering the quality and feature set on offer, and it is no wonder users that are fine with acceptable performance levels took to the slate in droves at these prices.
All Comments
Bought one for my wife at that price. It took hours to get through on their web site to order it though.
Looks like every place sold out. All Best Buy stores and BBY online as well as Microsoft online. This is a good sign. Only bad thing is, it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to snag a Surface RT at $199 or any price if you haven’t already.
I’m not surprised. The price has always been the main hold back. People just don’t expect to spend a lot of money on Windows-based products
Well I’d have bought 5 if I could, at this price, so there’s that. 😀 This was too good a deal to pass, I agree.
Finally, the Surface RT was priced under $300 with a keyboard. That’s where it belonged. Got one at Microcenter for $179.00.
I agree 100%. Both the RT and Pro were over priced. This is a great price point. Including the keyboard just seems like a “duh” idea to me.