• Windows Phone Area
• On September 8, 2014

In the past few weeks dealers have been announcing prices under $200 for different Windows tablets and laptops. This happens just now because of the decision of Microsoft to make Windows free for devices up to 9 inches for OEMs.

Thus, Microsoft is trying to compete Android and the prices of their devices. Before making Windows free, Microsoft’s products cost much more than devices running other operating systems. So, Android has been the leader on the market of smartphones and tablets. But now the situation is about to change with the plenty of new Windows devices on a low price.

Of course, with a price under $200 these products could not be as qualitative as iPads and the Surface 2 devices. But their performance is expected to be acceptable due to the Intel chips inside.

The Android market is far more developed than the Windows counterpart but Microsoft is putting much effort to fetch up – now Office 365 Personal is free for a year on your tablet and PC together with 1TB OneDrive space. The value of these two is $84 but you get them for free in one year’s time.

Microsoft’s partners and dealers should be aware of the risk but should sell the devices on minimum gain in order to get users back from Android. In some cases devices are sold with bold Android and Windows OS so here the Microsoft’s product is a better choice.

One example for the advantage of Microsoft’s action is the comparison with “Dropbox” which also gives you 1TB space but does not offer you Office pack and costs $99.

Meanwhile Asus has launched a new ultra affordable 8-inch Windows tabled named VivoTab 8. It ispowered by a quad-core Intel Atom Bay Trail processorand comes with a IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. The Asus VivoTab 8 features 32 GB of storage, 1/2GB of Ram and two 2-mp cameras. The price is just below $200 and you get Office 365 Personal for free for one year.