Microsoft has been on a mission as of late in pushing its Surface tablet to the masses. First came its price cut to entry level Surface RT, now the company is pushing a trade-in program. The plan is for folks to trade-in their “gently-used” iPad 2, 3, or 4 for a $200 gift card to the Microsoft store.
It’s obvious that Microsoft wants people to buy one of its Surface tablets, so dropping the price and providing gift cards for iPad defectors helps further the cause. However there are a couple of snags in this deal from Mr. Softy as the promotion runs out October 27, and the gift card is only good when you visit physical stores in the U.S. or Canada, not online.
Microsoft could have avoided all these losses and promotional tricks if it would have just sold the Surface RT at $399 with the keyboard at launch. No one knows if that strategy would’ve been a huge success, but what we can assume is that the Redmond-based company might have sold much more tablets than it has up to date if a favorable price point were implemented.
That being said, Microsoft is gearing up for a Surface 2 release sometime in the next few weeks. Most people only care about the Surface Pro, so its successor is expected to carry Intel’s new Haswell Core i5 chip that will surely boaster the Pro 2’s battery life, going from 5 to 7 hours. It’s going to be real interesting to see what Microsoft shows us within the next month or two.
Will they learn from their mistakes with the first-gen models?
Via GeekWire