Wintel tablet PCs may be priced from US$599-899
Wintel-based tablet PCs may see their prices go as high as US$599-899 due to Intel and Microsoft both being unwilling to drop their related hardware and software quotes, and as a result, it could push consumers from wanting to purchase the devices …
Context & Ripple Effects
The price talk lands seven months after Intel's ultrabook spec held component costs below $710 specifically so Wintel machines could spar with Apple on price — evidence the company already treats bill-of-materials discipline as the deciding factor against Cupertino. On tablets, the calculus has flipped: Intel and Microsoft are confirmed unwilling to trim their respective hardware and software quotes.
The resulting $599-899 band is a supply-chain estimate rather than announced pricing, but the quote behavior underneath it is not in dispute. If it holds, OEMs would be shipping Wintel slates into a market where Apple sets the reference price, with no obvious way to undercut it.
First-order effects
- OEMs building Wintel tablets face a parts-plus-license floor near $600, forcing a choice between absorbing the margin hit themselves or passing premium pricing straight to shoppers.
- Consumers get no entry-level Wintel option: the rumored band positions every slate from this camp as a premium device from day one, which the reporting itself flags as likely to deter purchases.
Second-order effects
- With the Intel-Microsoft quote stack capping how low a Wintel tablet can go, OEMs have a built-in incentive to steer mid-range volume toward cheaper silicon and OS combinations instead.
- Any Wintel tablet that ships at these prices effectively hands Apple a price umbrella at the high end while conceding the volume segment — the opposite of the undercut strategy Intel pursued with its ultrabook specification.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, the per-device royalties-plus-silicon model that funded the PC era becomes a structural handicap in tablets, pressuring Intel and Microsoft to eventually reprice or watch the category consolidate around cheaper stacks.
- Tablet OEM sourcing shifts toward suppliers whose quotes flex with device class, weakening the assumption that Wintel pricing carries over from notebooks into new form factors.
The trend: The Wintel cost stack — Intel silicon plus Microsoft license fees — is colliding with tablet-market pricing, forcing both companies to choose between defending legacy margins and staying price-competitive in post-PC devices.