Dell teases Surface Studio AiO rival at Adobe MAX conference

[HEXUS]

This upcoming dual screen AiO machine comes with a Surface Dial-like input device.

Read more.

[Vigil]

They better be selling it for less than the Studio because theirs is substantially less desirable. I wonder if Dell saw the Studio video and thought crap, why now.

[MrHornsby]

The price of the Studio is ridiculous. Don't get me long it looks great but at those kind of price brackets you're only hitting a small part of the market in my opinion.

[Gunbuster]

The price of the Studio is ridiculous. Don't get me long it looks great but at those kind of price brackets you're only hitting a small part of the market in my opinion.

A Wacom 27QHD is £1900 on its own and its not even 4K or 5K. Thats ignoring the PC to go with it. I think you don't understand how much this niche stuff costs when you don't sell to everyone. A Studio is around £2500 to £3500, thats £600-1600 for a PC, really not that bad.

[scaryjim]

... at those kind of price brackets you're only hitting a small part of the market in my opinion.

Well, yes, obviously. The Studio clearly isn't a mass market product - it's a niche product. For the people who have the use case it addresses, it probably looks dirt cheap (as Gunbuster's already pointed out). So I'm not really sure what your point is? "Microsoft's niche product doesn't address much of the market" is a bit of a redundant statement...!

[DDY]

It looks like a really good idea, it adds additional creative capabilities and will improve workflow.

Said the person who within a month will bury it at the back of the IT equipment cupboard or leave it on a dusty desk for the intern to run MS Office.

In my mind, this is the real target market.

[TheAnimus]

I think it's meant as a Halo Product.

This is something that is way more expensive than most people are willing to afford, more flexibility than they need etc. But it makes the brand look better by having it there people associate it as more premium and professional even at the lower end.

I remember a few years back cat pulled me into a discussion on some forum about a DSLR for a beginner on a budget. People were suggesting Pentax should be avoided because they didn't have a £2k Full Frame offering. The idea is that when you are spending £500, you should worry about the many thousand pound set ups is to me frankly bizarre. I think I remember reading something by Gladwell on there being an alignment perception people have they want to be in the same ingroup as the professional at the very high end, even if they are drinking lambrini not champaign.

[scaryjim]

... an alignment perception people have they want to be in the same ingroup as the professional at the very high end, even if they are drinking lambrini not champaign.

This is why £4 Cava sells by the lorry load, yet people will pay twice as much for an item because it has a premium brand name on it, or it's been endorsed by a celebrity. The actual quality and value of an item doesn't matter; it's the perceived associations. It's one reason why a lack of competition in a market is bad - it leaves one brand with all the positive association so it's almost impossible for a competitor to offer perceived value - hence the reason AMD hasn't been able to charge more than £150 for a processor for the last decade. They have no halo product, so there's no value or premium associated with AMD processors, even when they're objectively as good as the opposition for the given task. That reduces revenue and profits, which makes it even harder for them to be competitive.

If you're a company, you DON'T want to be in that position. So you release halo products; very niche, stupidly expensive, but add prestige to your brand.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is why £4 Cava sells by the lorry load, yet people will pay twice as much for an item because it has a premium brand name on it, or it's been endorsed by a celebrity. The actual quality and value of an item doesn't matter; it's the perceived associations. It's one reason why a lack of competition in a market is bad - it leaves one brand with all the positive association so it's almost impossible for a competitor to offer perceived value - hence the reason AMD hasn't been able to charge more than £150 for a processor for the last decade. They have no halo product, so there's no value or premium associated with AMD processors, even when they're objectively as good as the opposition for the given task. That reduces revenue and profits, which makes it even harder for them to be competitive.

If you're a company, you DON'T want to be in that position. So you release halo products; very niche, stupidly expensive, but add prestige to your brand.

Well TBF,its kind of the same on the graphics front in some way,but AMD has launched halo cards like the R9 290X and Fury X but screwed up on the coolers. Nvidia then realised the R9 290X cooler was meh and seeded cards to review sites to highlight the issue under certain fan modes. As a result the R9 290X looked a hot and a throttling card,which made AMD cards look like they were well all hot and throttling like their CPUs. But if go back a few months before,the Titan had thottling issues in more intense testing,and then a few months later the Titan Black with newer driver updates ran almost as hot,but Nvidia made sure the launches went perfectly and at least the coolers were decent enough to look OK under normal tests.

So it is kind of a double whammy for them. People think they make meh CPUs and meh high end cards(sadly).

I think its not only the halo products too,but the way you launch them. If a halo product launch has issues it can screw up the perception of your entire product stack and you need to be on the ball to manage the publics perception.

Its kind of why Apple has a positive perception even though they have had plenty of screw-ups with products going back 30 years. Things like the coating issues on the iPhone 4 and bendy iPhone 6 phones did little to dent the public's perception of their phones. Apple also had expanding MacBooks,etc,eMacs dying en-masse,and so on too.

[mtyson]