Microsoft Surface Pro's $100 Price Cut is Made Permanent
Microsoft extends the back-to-school Surface Pro discount indefinitely.
Earlier this summer, Microsoft cut the price of the Surface Pro. Originally billed as a back-to-school sale, Microsoft announced a $100 price cut in early August, and the price was supposed to go back up on August 29. However, instead of climbing back up to the original price, Microsoft on Thursday confirmed that the price cut would be permanent. 
Speaking to AllThingsD, the company lauded the consumer response to the new pricing but made no mention of how the new prices have affected sales of the machines.
"The customer response to recent Surface pricing and keyboard-cover promotions has been exciting to see, and we are proud to begin rollout of Surface Pro, Touch Cover and Surface RT bundles at even more affordable prices starting August 29," a Microsoft spokesperson said. "People who buy Surface love Surface, and we're eager for more people to get their hands on this incredible device."
Launched with Windows 8, the Surface line hasn't exactly been the roaring success Microsoft had hoped for, and a permanent discount doesn't exactly reflect well on the brand. Microsoft in July revealed that it was forced to write down $900 million for Surface RT due to a lack of sales, and then finally admitted that both Surface RT and Surface Pro had only generated $853 million in revenue since their debut in October 2012. However, that's not to say Microsoft is giving up on Surface. Nvidia this month confirmed that it's working on the second generation of Surface RT. No doubt there will be another Surface Pro, too.
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May change, but that's where we stand. If MS wants to change this mentality, they better stop taking a loss.
You can get decent laptops for cheaper with more storage, RAM, keyboard, etc. included instead of sold separately or as a beefy premium option.
Making the drop permanent and promising to have keyboard-cover bundles brings it closer to the price point of similarly spec'd laptops. Now that makes the choice between Surface Pro and a generic laptop a little easier - or harder depending on how you look at it.
This isn't too different from how Google decided to throw everything but the kitchen sink at introducing the N7 and N10 as promotional vehicles for Google Play to kickstart production of Android games, apps and filling their music/video selection... except Microsoft needed a year to realize that if they wanted to establish their Surface/SurfacePro brand and Windwos Store, they would have to aim for low profit per initial sale to seed the market.
Lets see if Microsoft now has a late-bloomer on their hands.
The point of owning is Surface Pro is not to run app from MS store. If you are going to pay that much for a Pro model your main objective will be running desktop applications first, new Metro UI app is just a bonus.
First of all, to say Surface Pro is "not selling", it is only in the sense that compare to the unit sales of iPad, it is "not selling". I suspect Surface Pro sells just as well as any other ultrabook in the market. It is a premium priced device with different usage in mind, which the market has shown that it is not as mainstream as iPad class of device that does less, performs slower, but priced much lower. But we cannot look at the acceptance of Surface Pro based on its unit sales alone, because it needs to compete with similar tablets offering, as well as ultrabooks or even laptops from other vendors. The combined unit sales of such device class is still quite substantial, it is just that unlike iPad which is sold by a single company, the market share is shared by many vendors. The fact that almost every vendors out there give up on RT devices but will continue to make Windows 8 pro tablets has shown that the vendors know there are many people buying such devices. Also remember Surface Pro has given other vendor 3 months headstart, and in other parts of the world, sometimes even as much as 9 months headstart. Many people who are interested in such devices already bought similar tablet from other vendors before Microsft made theirs available. Now that Haswell has been released, many vendors have switched to the new CPU which has much better battery running time than Surface Pro. Microsoft really needs to speed up in their product rollout if they really wants to become a "device company".
The price premium isn't worth it to most people.