Today, Microsoft unveiled the first of what appears to be quite an ad blitz for its Surface “family” of computers. The ad ran on tonight’s Monday Night Football game and elsewhere, and is featured on YouTube:
Click here to view the video on YouTube.
Microsoft is reportedly spending a lot of money on advertising for the new Surface brand and Windows 8, to the tune of upwards of almost two billion dollars, according to Forbes:
Microsoft is taking no chances: Windows 8 will roll out with a marketing campaign estimated at $ 1.5 to $ 1.8 billion (yes, billion with a “B”). That’s the biggest product launch in the history of the industry; it dwarfs the $ 200 million Microsoft spent to market Windows 95. In fact, notes Enderle, “the marketing effort is on a scale you don’t see outside presidential elections.”
So all-in-all, Windows 8 is a big bet, but one Microsoft thinks it can win.
Now, along with new ads, and a couple of weeks shy of the big launch event on October 25th and availability at midnight on October 26th, word is filtering out that we may finally learn more about pricing for the Surface.
So far, prices for Windows 8 tablets offered by 3rd party OEMs have been disappointingly a bit high, with, as Paul Thurrott notes on Twitter, a number of RT tablets falling in the $ 599-799 range, but there are rumblings that Microsoft may come in quite aggressively with its Surface pricing:
52 minutes ago via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite
With yesterday’s announcement of (some of) the details on Xbox Music and Xbox Music Pass, and given Microsoft’s previous experiments with hardware/subscription bundling, could we see a Surface RT tablet carry a low sticker price with a bundled Xbox Music Pass subscription? It sounds like we may not have to wait long to find out.