If you are holding out for a hero (as in another Windows RT tablet) as early as this spring, prepare to be disappointed. Surface RT is your best bet for the near future if you want an inexpensive Windows tablet.
While several manufacturers have announced their plans of releasing new Windows RT tablets, they will make their way on store shelves sometimes after spring 2013. This was confirmed by Tami Reller, the chief financial officer and lead of the Windows division at Microsoft.
She was talking to Bloomberg, and without providing any numbers, stated:
“We will scale over time, but right now we’re focused on making sure the designs that have been built do have commercial availability and commercial success, and we’ll stay focused on that for the short-term.”
Redmond’s strategy for now, it seems, is getting the existing Windows RT tablets in buyer’s hands.
Microsoft has been terribly selective in licensing Windows RT to other companies, at least up until now.
So much so that Qualcomm’s chief raised concerns about the limited selection due to Microsoft’s restrictions on which manufacturers could make tablet devices powered by Windows RT. CEO Paul Jacob was recently quoted as saying:
“The fact that there were only a handful of manufacturers that were allowed to participate, definitely in my mind held down the competition on form factors and everything that I would have liked to have seen.”
Out of these partners, Samsung has already said that it does not plan on launching a Windows RT tablet in the United States. Reller confirmed the news adding that the Korean company many change its plans for Windows RT in the future.
