I would like to see Sony offer Surface Pro rivalling Windows tablet but at a cheaper price point.

Myss_tree
I would like to see Sony offer Surface Pro rivalling Windows tablet but at a cheaper price point.

I really can't see Sony doing a Windows tablet after getting out of the PC business. And Sony doing a “cheaper price point” than Microsoft? This is Sony we're talking about, so “no”.

Surely there's plenty of Surface Pro competition from the likes of Asus, HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc?

crossy

Myss_tree
I would like to see Sony offer Surface Pro rivalling Windows tablet but at a cheaper price point.

I really can't see Sony doing a Windows tablet after getting out of the PC business. And Sony doing a “cheaper price point” than Microsoft? This is Sony we're talking about, so “no”.

Surely there's plenty of Surface Pro competition from the likes of Asus, HP, Lenovo, Dell, etc?

The rush (by manufacturers) seems to be the opposite of quality high end as they head for the bottom where Windows with Bing is license free cost wise.
Sony do have a track record for the occasional product thats out of the leftfield and of course for expensive quality products.
The Surface Pro is well over priced particularly factoring in a keyboard. If Sony could price match plus throw in the keyboard in that price they would be on to a winner.
Microsoft do need competition around the Surface Pro size form factor.

Myss_tree
The rush (by manufacturers) seems to be the opposite of quality high end as they head for the bottom where Windows with Bing is license free cost wise.
Sony do have a track record for the occasional product thats out of the leftfield and of course for expensive quality products.
The Surface Pro is well over priced particularly factoring in a keyboard. If Sony could price match plus throw in the keyboard in that price they would be on to a winner.
Microsoft do need competition around the Surface Pro size form factor.

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree necessarily. Yes, there's a splurge of Wing products, but most of those seem to be by “non-mainstream” companies, with the big players just dipping a toe in, if they're playing the game at all.

Sony were pretty innovative, but with the current financial strictures I'm very sure that R&D will be getting hit, and hit hard. So there'll definitely be a strong resistance to doing anything risky. That said, I was looking at this years crop of Sony Walkman player and was quite impressed - good on features and actually priced pretty competitively. I got one of the old OLED-screened Sony players and to be honest it makes the contemporary Apple devices sound pretty awful. Plus it has active noise cancellation and a pretty good set of earphones.

Surface Pro is (arguably) at the top end of the acceptable market. Then again, it was positioned (according to the paperwork I've seen) originally as a “premium” device up against Apple's laptop products. And in that company it's actually competitive. Problem is that the other big players, (and I'm thinking particularly the of the equivalent HP Envy x2), price around the same point. But maybe that's because the SP3 is using the full i3/i5 processor. If you scale down your requirements then there's other players out there. I'm thinking particularly of the Asus VivoTab Smart, (which Scan have for less than £240). Downside being that this is an Atom-powered beastie.

And I wouldn't necessarily discount the Windows-with-Bing stuff, depends what you actually want. If you're looking for a more stylish/portable full-fat laptop then you're going to have to expect to pay for the privilege.