Samsung Won't Release Windows RT Tablet In US

New submitter sandoval88419 writes "During CES the U.S. head of Samsung Tablet business announced they won't release Windows RT devices in the U.S. Explanations are low demand, heavy investment to educate the consumer on the differences between windows RT and 8 and more importantly the effort to keep a low retail price with the Microsoft offering. "

Comments

No big loss

[colinrichardday]

Not that I wanted Windows RT

Re:No big loss

[Bing Tsher E]

This makes complete sense.

Why should Samsung expend resources to push a platform that will likely have the third best market share in Mobile OSes. They need to concentrate on keeping Android the best mobile platform.

Re:No big loss

[DarkOx]

I am sure they will sell Windows tablets just not Windows RT tablets.

You got to look at it this way. Windows RT exists only as a way for Microsoft to be price competitive and hopefully squeeze Android out without being seen as cannibalizing their higher priced higher margin product Windows. Microsoft biggest fear is droid or some Linux variant successfully moving "up market" and being sold on anyone's top line hardware because if the market place embraces it well, the value of the Windows property declines sharply.

Samsung lives with this reality.

They have customers who *need* windows for compatibility reasons, a large portion of those would not be served by WinRT anyway.
They have successful Android product lines they have already done the startup investment in so margin is higher
The "tablet PC" space were Windows (proper) lives from a cost of production standpoint is likely going down while prices remain much higher than the "tablet" space.

All sinking money into Windows RT would do is eat into their Droid products market. Their is no reason to do it.

interesting...

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny the Slashdot community skipped right over the news Microsoft sold 60 million licenses so far. this place really is the fox news of tech.

Re:interesting...

[Missing.Matter]

Isn't that the same argument that was made when they sold 40M? Presumably, if there were still 40M licenses sitting on shelves, OEMs wouldn't buy 20M more to further sit on shelves.

OEMs try to keep as little inventory as possible. They only buy as many as they think they can sell. So how many exactly are in consumer's hands? Less than 60M and more than you care to admit.

Re:interesting...

[ClaraBow]

And Windows 8 licenses are NOT Windows RT licenses! This confusion between the two different operation systems is really going to bite MS at some point!

Tell your parents that Win8 won't Win8 programs

[raymorris]

Grandma bought Microsoft Office and it says right on the box "designed for Windows 8". She bought a Windows 8 machine from you. Explain to grandma how she didn't just get ripped off. Remember she has no clue what "x86" is.
Further, explain to ANYONE why they should spend $400 on a WinRT tablet that's less functional than a $180 Android tablet.

Re:Tell your parents that Win8 won't Win8 programs

[DavidD_CA]

Except that Windows RT comes with Microsoft Office, for free, already installed.

I get your point, though. But the same argument can be made for so many other things.

Grandma bought $app (for Mac OS) because she has an iPad and knows that it's made by Apple.

Grandma bought $app for her Android (v1.23) tablet because she knows that it runs Android. Except it is only supported on v4.56.

Yes, there is a lot of confusion in the marketplace. But Microsoft does not have the monopoly on it.

Don't put new wine into old wineskins

[Marcion]

Until very recently computing has all been utilising the benefits of this year's more powerful and more resource hungry x86 processor. Relatively cheap laptops are more powerful than supercomputers 15 years ago but the user experience is not particularly more responsive because software gets increasingly bloated.

ARM devices are really a different proposition, on the plus side they have no moving parts and a long battery life, however they are a very different architecture to x86, and making the OS perform well requires lots of differences. Linux (and therefore android too) was always built to be a modular system and one thing it does well is support different platforms with many compatible but swappable components at every level. The world's top supercomputers and the £25 Raspberry Pi both happily run Linux.

Windows is very different. It is a set of very tightly integrated libraries, which has its benefits, but they all need to be scaled down to work on ARM, you cannot just swap out some resource hungry component for some open source project because the system is so interdependent. Scaling down software is much harder than scaling it up.

Therefore I am not suprised that Samsung found Windows' ARM version slow and resource hungry. Just because Windows dominated the x86 era, it does not mean it will be suitable for the new and disruptive ARM age.

Re:Don't put new wine into old wineskins

[dimeglio]

During the last 10 years, there was this ghz race. Processors were built with inefficiencies (power consumption) over raw power and time to market. With the (re)birth of ARM, Intel likely came to realize that raw power might not work for everyone. So they are now engineering their flagship processors the way they should have in the first place.

Re:Don't put new wine into old wineskins

[fermion]

My intel I7 computer has no moving parts. And it can run in 128 GB of mass storage. Three years ago it ran on 64GB.

Windows has lot of bulk, some might call it bloat. As a result it does not lend itself so much to a solid state device, which is where computers have heading for 50 years.

The mistake that Windows has made it to label both these devices WIndows. Apple labeled their legacy OS Mac OS X and their tablet OS iOS. The consumer is going to see these as separate devices.

Some of the problems are going to unavoidable, like the netbook. People are going to be looking for a cheap computer, and then complain that it does not run windows, and demand a return. But other problems are avoidable.

I am sure that some of the problem is that MS is playing the money game, like it has done with Windows for a long time. Supply an arbitrarily limited OS that can be sold on inexpensive computers. Then they demand additional monies to unlock the full feature set of the WIndows OS.

And we have seen this hardware issue with MS Vista. Contemporary computers being sold as MS Vista ready. when they weren't. MS has put themselves in the position in which consumers assume that every computer sold today is going to be able run the MS Windows sold today, and the OEM is going be held responsible if it doesn't. Does it surprise anyone if Samsung does not want to deal with the consumer backlash.

Re:Not clear?

[gtirloni]

You don't buy something for your Macbook and expect it to run on your iPhone "because it's all Apple, look, it's similar"

You don't buy something for Android and expect it to run on your Linux desktop "because it's all Linux underneath, right?"

You don't buy something for your Windows 8 desktop and expect it to run on your Windows tablet. IMHO, Microsoft has the advantage in that it's going to deliver a tablet with actually Windows 8 x86 capable of running those apps "grandma bought".

Anyone, perhaps I see what Samsung is saying (not much information)... they could always skip Windows RT and concentrate on Windows 8 x86 for tablets anyway since Intel seems to be doing some progress on the power efficiency front.

Re:Not clear?

[93 Escort Wagon]

I thought it was clear enough that Windows RT is to be the Windows version for ARM tablet devices that will compete directly with iPad and Android tablets..

End users don't grok these differences that seem obvious to you and to me. Here's a snippet of conversation I've had multiple times:

User: I've been thinking about switching to Mac.

Me: I really like my Mac, but you need to think about how you use your computer. Do you have any Windows-specific software you need to run?

(Clarification about what that means)

User: Yeah I've got Program X that I need for my work.

Me: That wont run on a Mac. There may be Mac-based alternatives, or you could probably buy virtualization software and run it that way.

User: Why does a Mac need different software? ...