Look out, Apple! Microsoft’s gunning to take down the iPad!
Well, take it down below 50 percent market share, anyway. And how do they plan to do that? Well, remember at the end of the last Star Trek movie when the Romulan commander with the ridiculous backstory yells “Fire everything!”? Something like that.
“Intel/Microsoft aim to push down iPad global market share under 50% by mid-2013” (tip o’ the antlers to Adrian Kingsley-Hughes)
Now before we get our collective panties in a wad, we must first ask ourselves two questions.
First: Should we really believe a “report” from the notoriously wrong DigiTimes?
And second: Why are we all wearing one pair of women’s undergarments? That can’t be sanitary. Is it laundry day or something?
Intel and Microsoft have been keeping close cooperation with first-tier vendors developing new tablet PCs based on Windows 8, with a goal of decreasing the global market share for iPad from 70% currently to below 50% by the middle of 2013, according to Taiwan-based ODMs.
Um…OK. The Macalope supposes that’s possible, but with Windows 8 not even shipping until the fall it’s not going to be easy—particularly if ARM tablets aren’t coming until later than fall, as the “report” claims.
DigiTimes’s “source” (really, there aren’t enough quotes in the world to make DigitTimes’s material look sufficiently questionable) further said that there would be 32 Windows 8 tablets on the market by the end of this year, with prices ranging from “below $300,” to compete with the Kindle Fire, and “over $300,” to compete with the iPad.
So a really targeted launch that’s sure not to cause any confusion. Clearly both Microsoft and the OEMs have a well-defined strategy that hits what people really want in a tablet, not that compromised user experience that’s been foisted on them for the past two years. If the Macalope may be so bold, he believes their strategy can be summarized thusly:
“WE KILL APPLE! KIIIIILLL! RRRAAWWWRRRRBLOZZERFLAZZERBLOOZLIE!”
Look, iPads are popular. Very, very popular. People love them. Heck, corporations even love them. Microsoft seems to be trying a shotgun approach to finding the niches that are still left in the tablet market. Which seems like a tremendous waste—if one that isn’t out of character for Redmond.
[Editors’ Note: In addition to being a mythical beast, the Macalope is not an employee of Macworld. As a result, the Macalope is always free to criticize any media organization. Even ours.]