Samsung will not be bringing its Ativ Tab Windows RT
tablet to the US market due to poor market awareness of
the difference between Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT, and
other reasons.
Senior Vice President of Samsung's US PC and tablet
divisions Mike Abary confirmed to CNet in an interview
that Samsung wasn't able to find a "clear positioning" of
Windows 8 RT in the marketplace versus the x86
architecture Windows 8. Abary cited market research
indicating that Samsung would have to do a great deal of
consumer education on the difference between the two
operating systems.
"When we added those two things up, the investments
necessary to educate the consumer on the difference
between RT and Windows 8, plus the modest feedback that we
got regarding how successful could this be at retail from
our retail partners, we decided maybe we ought to wait,"
Abary explained.
"We didn't necessarily attain the price point that we
hoped to attain," Abary said. "It's not an issue on
Microsoft's side. It's more an issue of how the product
was built and some of the tradeoffs we had to incorporate
in it."
"We want to see how the market develops for RT. It's not
something we're shelving permanently. It's still a viable
option for us in the future, but now might not be the
right time," concluded Abary.
Besides Samsung, HP and Toshiba have no immediate plans
for a Windows 8 RT device.