Wintel-based tablet PCs may be priced around 599 to 899 USD as both Intel and Microsoft are unwilling to drop their hardware and and sofrware costs. The impact would be pushing end consumers to buy cheaper tablets powered by other processors and OS.
The reason for not lowering the price is understandable. If tablets are priced too competitively, it will impact the sales of notebooks. Currently, plans for the new tablets will be powered by Intel Clover Trial-W and Windows 8 as the OS.
If Intel doesn’t reduce the pricing of their processors, manufacturers can choose ARM solutions from Nvidia, Qualcomm and Texas Instrument’s (TI’s) for their upcoming Windows 8 tablet PC to reduce their costs.
The ease of use of Windows 8 OS opens another revenue for tablet makers. It will compete head to head with iPad 3 (to be launched in March 2012) and current slate of tablets upgraded to run the Android 4.0.