Originally Posted by Lyricalis:
“Seems like a potentially costly way of taking a strop with Microsoft because they dared to release their own hardware.”
That was my feeling really. It may well backfire though because I have a feeling (based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever other than having worked for an OEM in the past) that Microsoft have deliberately pitched their Surface tablets at the high end of the market to leave space for partners to come in at the mass market price points.
If Microsoft see RT having problems because there's nothing available at those prices then they may decide to bring Surface down to that price level which will make it very hard for people like HTC to compete. Hopefully other OEMs will come into the market soon enough that it won't be an issue though.
Personally, I think RT is likely to be a year to 18 months away from being mass market. In my opinion the Surface Pro (and others) is likely to be popular which will start to drive the Windows 8 application development which, in turn, will start to make RT viable.
All of that's just conjecture and gut feeling though