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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. "
Not that I wanted Windows RT
I heard they'd cost an ARM and a leg...
You don't become the leading smartphone manufacturer by being a sucker.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.
Because:
1) That's actually a low rate for Windows adoption;
2) More importantly, it provides no information at all on sales of Windows RT tablets.
How many of those licences are installed on computers currently sitting in warehouses and on the shelves at Best Buy? They're in the channel (on all new PCs, whether people want it or not), not necessarily in the end user's hands.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
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.
you often need to drill down to the 'tech specs' page when looking at tablets in order to tell whether it has a useful OS or not.
Can't you just check if it says "Windows" on the cover?
A better statistic would be to find out what percentage of new PC purchasers would pay a bit more for a Windows 7 downgrade.
C'mon, Microsoft. We dare you to make that offer. The statistics would be helpful, even to you.
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!
Windows RT is anything but clear
I'm actually interested in a Tablet PC ecause I'd ike to run windows binaries on that form factor without recompiling myself. Which I can't.
But every tablet device is advertised and reviewed so lazily that it is hard to tell if it is runing Windows 8 or RT. RT is a whole new eco system to invest in. Currently I'm running Android, Windows and Linux. I do not want another OS in my life.
This RT/non RT thing will confuse people for another few years. How would you market a 10" super thin tablet with 8hrs+ battery life and x86 architecture running Windows 8? How would you distinguish it from the hordes of Windows RT devices?
The name "Windows" has become diluted beyond belief. This has to be the most bone-headed marketing move ever.
20 minutes into the future
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.
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.
My little Linux and tech blog
Actually, aside from the US, why would Samsung even do an RT tablet anywhere, when they have one of the most successful Android products in both the Galaxy phone & the Galaxy tab?
If they wanted, it might make sense for them to do an Atom/Fusion based Windows 8 tablet, and that would probably be the only good platform for Windows 8 in that it will be able to run Wintel apps as well.
Windows RT will be an even bigger fiasco than either Windows NT on RISC (Alpha, MIPS) or Windows Server 2008 on Itanium ever was.
OEM buys the licenses beforehand.
All MS has to do is say "Ok, instead of having 1 months supply of Windows 8 licenses I need you to buy 5 months ahead of time!"
Then MS releases a press release saying "OMG DEMAND FOR WINDOWS 8 WENT UP 500%!" Intentionally, exgerated of course but that is my point. We all know the accounting tricks of Vista numbers where people and businesses bought them but wiped them and downgraded to XP.
Online website counters are the real way to predict adoption. If anyone is interested in the real number of people *actually using* windows 8 click here from statcounter who checks millions of websites each day? Windows 8 was 2% the last I looked. In comparison Windows 7 jumped 3x more in the same time period 3 years ago!
In otherwords it is a dud.
http://saveie6.com/
If you dump mass licenses of W8 to OEMs with W7 downgrade rights this is going to happen. They save up millions of licenses and bring down their costs - they have to to remain competitive. But this has nothing to do with which version of the software gets delivered to the customer, nor how popular it is.
Go to dell.com or HP.com and look at their premium desktops. Windows 7 gets top billing still and Windows 8 is an option. In HP's case there are more preconfigured options with SUSE Linux than Windows 8. In Dell's case not one system comes with Windows 8 by default.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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? ...
#DeleteChrome
Or put another way
Windows 8 Usage Sinks Below Vista Levels
Windows 7 had more than 10 times the usage at this point in its lifecycle
http://www.dailytech.com/Windows+8+Usage+Sinks+Below+Vista+Levels/article29546.htm