Microsoft success with Surface depends on pricing

ABI Research has some important advice for Microsoft (MSFT) to consider: If it wants its Surface tablets to succeed, it needs to price them lower than the iPad. ABI analyst Jeff Orr says that while Windows tablets will only account 1.5% of tablets shipped this year, the company could see that share grow tenfold next year if it plays its cards right and prices its tablets aggressively to compete with Google’s (GOOG) Nexus 7 and Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle Fire. In particular, Orr thinks Microsoft’s secret weapon is Windows RT, the lightweight version of its Windows 8 operating system that Orr says “accelerates an existing ecosystem of vendors experienced with ARM-based development and leveraging the architecture strengths” and “represents Microsoft’s first OS volley addressing future generations of computing devices while leaving much of the legacy Windows baggage behind.”

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