Acer is the latest maker to delay plans for a Windows RT fondletop
'Market needs to develop' - and Surface didn't help
Acer has postponed the release of its Windows RT tab on the channels say so as it waits to see how market adoption rates develop.
The Taiwanese giant had planned to push out its version around February next year but EMEA president Oliver Ahrens confirmed the date has slipped by a couple of months.
"We talk to channel partners and they list the products, they have certain expectations of sales quantities…The RT market has to evolve and we think Q2 is a good time [to launch]," he said.
The launch of Microsoft's Surface slab, which it will sell directly for the interim at least, has caused consternation among OEMs most notably Acer, and some channel partners.
In fact, Acer global president Jim Wong told Reuters it was "more cautious" about RT because of Microsoft's hardware incursion.
The reportedly high cost of the RT license was also understood to be the sticking point for some PC re-branders.
However Toshiba, which backtracked on its Windows RT roadmap recently, cited key component shortages as the reason and not the concern over conflict with Microsoft.
PC vendors have in large been very slow to announce their RT versions, and HP and Lenovo recently admitted the lack of marketing from the industry will confuse some consumers on what the ARM system stands for.
Ahrens at Acer said it released eleven Intel-based touch Windows 8 platforms to market and this will hog its attention in the short term.
"We cannot cook everything at the same time, we are not magicians," he told The Channel.
According to Digi Times, Samsung, Lenovo, Dell and Asus are pushing out RT models but sources told the paper that shipments would be limited to 50,000 each. ®
COMMENTS
50,000 shipments each
This sounds like fulfilling contractual obligations rather than any expectation of selling them.
Anyway the Surface isn't exactly getting glowing reviews, so perhaps the RT market could do with some competition assuming the platform actually does take off.
VERY telling
They have seen what's Windows 8 RT is like, and have run a mile, like everyone else, including Kevin...
http://www.zdnet.com/three-days-in-the-life-of-a-once-and-former-microsoft-surface-rt-user-7000006421/
We can only hope it fails, because RT is basically an Apple style jail cell without the pretty garden.
The more consumers stupidly vote with their dollars for monolithic control by a single corporation over the devices they purchase, the sooner the internet will revert to something akin to the dark ages of Compuserve and AOL a decade ago.
And, you will find you don't really own what you paid for anymore. Like a Playstation, if you alter it, hack it, put something on it they don't want you to, you'll get sued, locked out, penalized.
All that can be done with clever combinations of copyright and license agreements you have to sign at purchase, which usually nobody reads.
Like Apple's new Lightning connector: copyrighted, even though it does nothing that a standard USB connector couldn't do just as well. And it has a chip built in, solely to prevent you from plugging something in that Apple doesn't want you to plug in.
I hope people wake up before these things turn even more extreme.
Re: I think
> the amount of bloatware, software trials, tool bars and other useless cruft
The article is talking about Windows RT, there is _no_ bloatware, software trials, tool bars or other cruft, useless or not, because there is no software for it*.
* beyond some converted phone apps - and Windows RT is not a phone.
Re: Sigh...
"Please stop repeating this tired old meme. It's complete rubbish and shows up the people who repeat it as knowing nothing about Windows."
True. Windows 9 will be a pile of shit just like Windows 1 through to 8. There was a reason they had to get it included with the computer and why they still put a lot of effort into that particular packaging trick - they know they couldn't shift it any other way.
