Proof that the iPad is still the best tablet out there

I wrote a blog on June 11th about why the iPad would continue to run circles around all other competitors. You can find it here.  Basically I said that as long as competitors priced their tablets at the same price as the iPad, it would be no contest and most people would pick the iPad any day of the week.

If competitors cut their prices and competed on pricing, they might have a chance.  Well, another competitor just did that.  Microsoft cut their pricing on their Surface by 50-60% - but only for education purposes.  The $499 Surface RT will be sold for $199, at a 60% discount.  The $599 Surface RT with Touch Cover for $249, and the $629 Surface RT with Type Cover for $289.

This is only offered to school systems nationwide. Microsoft has a long history of providing student discounts for their products, like the long standard discount on their Office suite to college students.  This plays into that, however there's probably another reason. They have only sold about 900,000 tablets in the first quarter of this year, which Apple probably does in a good week.  This has been compounded by the difficulty of finding them.  According to the article above, rumors are that they made nearly 5 million of these, which means they're sitting on huge inventory and need to get rid of it.  They can afford to lose money on the Surface.  They lost billions on the Xbox for years before turning it into a profit center.  This is the luxury that a company with tons of cash has.

They're hoping that school systems will decide to go with the Surface and buy them in large numbers and then their users, school students, will become the evangelists for their product.  Will that happen? I don't know, but this is the first sign of a company realizing that they won't compete on features because of the limited number of apps available and deciding to try on price.

I think this is a very promising sign.

Another sign that its starting to begin in schools. The Los Angeles, CA school system just signed a $30 million contract with Apple to provide iPads to students in their district.  You can find the Engadget article here. This contract will yield 45,000 iPads in a district that has 640,000 students. Not sure how they'll divide that up, maybe high school students only?  These iPads will come preloaded with a course app for their school.

The future I predicted here is almost here.