Tablets sales may have peaked, but that doesn’t mean hundreds of millions of them won’t be flying off the shelves over the next 12 months and beyond.
Microsoft, for one, will be hoping for its best year ever now that its Surface Pro 3 has managed to overturn the once widely held belief that the company should ditch its tablet ambitions and stick with what it knows best.
In an effort to tempt consumers into parting with several hundred dollars in the coming weeks and months, the computer giant on Monday knocked $100 off the cost of the Pro 3.
The deal, which runs through April 5, hits all versions of the Pro except the cheapest 64GB model, which stays at $799. This means you can now pick up the 128GB Intel i5 Pro 3 for $899, while at the other end of the scale the 512GB i7 version comes with a $1,849 price tag. The offer also includes a free Surface 3 Pro sleeve.
Microsoft’s tablet business has improved markedly since it launched the first Surface back in 2012. The early models were largely panned by critics, but several iterations later and the company has produced the kind of machine it surely wished it’d come up with the first time around.
In fact, at the end of last year the Pro 3 helped Microsoft to its best ever quarter for tablet revenue with Surface sales exceeding $1 billion for the very first time.