{"id":8071,"date":"2012-12-17T10:15:09","date_gmt":"2012-12-17T09:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/?p=8071"},"modified":"2019-05-16T18:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-05-16T16:22:40","slug":"microsoft-surface-begins-its-french-roll-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/2012\/12\/microsoft-surface-begins-its-french-roll-out\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Surface now available in stores in France"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Microsoft Surface, which appears to be off to a mixed and ambiguous start<\/a> on the other side of the Atlantic, just launched in France, right in time for the holidays. As with other markets, Microsoft has opted for a slow roll-out, choosing only to sell the Surface in a few major chains\/distributors initially before expanding more broadly. \u00a0Having launched this past weekend, French consumers can now pick-up the Surface online or in physical outlets at FNAC and Boulanger<\/a>. \u00a0As in the US, the Surface is priced to go head-to-head with iPad<\/a>, a very different strategic approach than most tablet makers have taken. \u00a0In France, the price stands at \u20ac589 for the 32GB version and \u20ac694 for the 64GB, which puts the Surface at \u20ac20 cheaper than the latest generation iPad (with wifi). \u00a0Of course, you then need to spend an extra \u20ac120-\u20ac130 to buy the feature which probably makes the Surface stand out the most from its peers, the type cover keyboard.
\nThe Surface has received some positive initial reviews <\/a>in the States and France and recent Surface converts seem to love it, so at least there’s some good buzz around it. \u00a0However, there are a couple of things about the Surface that may give consumers pause.
\nFirst, and probably most importantly, the Windows 8 app ecosystem is nowhere near as well-developed as its competitions’. \u00a0To underscore this point – currently there are\u00a0700k apps in the AppStore and only 10k in the Windows store<\/a>! \u00a0<\/strong>This is a massive difference.\u00a0 Microsoft is, of course, pushing hard to rapidly grow this number and many app developers are now developing on Windows 8 (particularly given the up to 80% revenue share for developers)<\/a>. \u00a0However the fact is that users of Windows 8 devices will have to wait a bit before they have the proliferation of apps that are available on iOS and Android. In a related point, with fewer apps, app support is also currently under-developed at this stage, although this will eventually change.
\nAnother challenge is that the type cover keyboard, which in most reviews is considered to be an integral part of the Surface’s user experience, is not included in the price. \u00a0Asking people to shell out another \u20ac120+ on top of almost \u20ac600 is a lot to ask. \u00a0However, as mentioned, the Surface does have respectable reviews, is probably one of the highest quality tablets out there, and with its design (with type cover) and operating system, it’s probably one of the few tablets that might actually be able to replace a PC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Surface, which appears to be off to a mixed and ambiguous start on the other side of the Atlantic, just launched in France, right in time for the holidays. As with other markets, Microsoft has opted for a slow roll-out, choosing only to sell the Surface in a few major chains\/distributors initially before expanding<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":77,"featured_media":8074,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"subtitle":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10564],"tags":[8113,8497,8514,7298],"class_list":["post-8071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech-2","tag-android-en-2","tag-fnac-en","tag-ios-en","tag-microsoft-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/77"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8071"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudebaguette.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}