Steve Ballmer was loud when he proclaimed Samsung to be one of Microsoft's key partners in the tablet market. However, to the surprise of many, Samsung seems to have different plans. According to a CNET report, Samsung senior vice president Mike Abary said the company, in contrast to its initial plans, will not be releasing a Windows RT tablet in the U.S. market.
Samsung's U.S. head gave two reasons as to why the company has second thoughts on its Qualcomm-powered Windows RT device in the country. Firstly, he says the feedback from its retail partners indicates a sluggish demand for the product in the U.S. market. Secondly, the South Korean tech giant is really concerned about the significant amount of investment required to educate consumers about the benefits of Windows RT.
Here is what Abary told CNET during the Consumer Electronic Show (CES) in Las Vegas.
"There wasn't really a very clear positioning of what Windows RT meant in the marketplace, what it stood for relative to Windows 8, that was being done in an effective manner to the consumer. When we did some tests and studies on how we could go to market with a Windows RT device, we determined there was a lot of heavy lifting we still needed to do to educate the customer on what Windows RT was. And that heavy lifting was going to require pretty heavy investment. When we added those two things up, the investments necessary to educate the consumer on the difference between RT and Windows 8, plus the modest feedback that we got regarding how successful could this be at retail from our retail partners, we decided maybe we ought to wait."
However, he did not clearly specify the company's plans for non-U.S. markets. According to him, a major selling factor for the tablet, dubbed the Ativ Tab, is that it should be lesser in price than those using Windows 8. Abary admitted that Samsung had to make a lot of feature compromises, like less memory, to keep the prices down, which he said the company wasn't willing to do.
Samsung's backing off from the original plan is a huge blow for Microsoft, which has been pushing hard its Windows RT operating system with its own Surface tablet. The news adds more woes to Microsoft's piling miseries, including reports that HP and Toshiba have already shelved their plans to build a Windows RT tablet, and various reports which suggest that its RT-based Surface tablet is selling poorly.
