Intel’s Atom Windows 8 Tablets Seem Destined to Fail

In today’s world, media-hypnotized people will buy absolutely anything at any price. Intel’s money, marketing, market clout and monopolistic practices helped the company keep over 80% of the x86 market for 7 years, between 1999 and 2006 despite offering clearly inferior products.

We’ve already got used to seeing tablet prices falling on a yearly basis and performance jumping higher and higher just as often.

Now Microsoft and Intel seem dead set on reversing the trend.

The two giants apparently expect customers to pay twice the money for half the performance.

ASUS left everybody amazed when prices for its Windows 8 and Windows RT tablets have been revealed to be set at $800 (614 EUR) for the Intel-based one and $600 (460 EUR) for the ARM version.

It seems we were right when we reported here that Intel’s platform will be significantly more expensive than ARM-based solutions.

On the other hand, the performance of Intel’s mobile Atom processors is abysmal when compared with the top ARM CPUs, and we detailed that here.

Today Acer goes further and adds yet another apparent nail in Intel Atom’s coffin.

The company is reportedly planning to release its Intel Clover Trail Windows 8 tablet priced at an incredible $1000 (770 EUR).

Yes, you’ve got that right. They’re planning to charge you 1000 bucks for roughly a third of performance Qualcomm’s APQ 8064 will offer in any Android tablet.

There is a chance that all these reports are not all that accurate.

Intel’s Windows 8 / Clover Trail launch event that we reported here will set the record straight, but the way things are right now, the Intel Atom /Windows 8 platform seems destined to fail.