On this episode of First Ring Daily from the show floor of VeeamOn, we dive into the brand new, super shiny, Surface Hub 2.
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<p>So, Panos Panay posted a blog, and he specifically wrote: "….<span style="color: rgb(95, 94, 94); background-color: transparent;">The new Surface Hub 2 is sleeker, more agile and more </span><u style="color: rgb(95, 94, 94); background-color: transparent;">affordable</u><span style="color: rgb(95, 94, 94); background-color: transparent;"> to fit any workspace or work style". So, sounds like are going to lower the price vs. the current Surface Hub (55" version, which is $7,000). </span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(95, 94, 94); background-color: transparent;">My guess though it the pricing can be thought of against 2 things: Google Jamboard at $4,500, and high-to-medium-end 4K TVs (~55") which are at $2,000ish. When you compare it to a 4K TV, this product has in addition, a digitizer, special hinges, cameras, accelerometers, special mounts, software, so, it has to come in at least >$3,500 low end. Then of course, Microsoft isn't a low margin type company, and they have always priced Surfaces for premium, so my best guess is it will end up around $4,000 to $5,000, (you can always option out any product, right?). They'd probably take that and then give .edu customers special breaks to get them below that perhaps in the $3,000 to $3,500 range. In short I still don't see this being cheap where people put them in home offices, especially if you can't access their special discounts (but if they position it as you can also watch TV on it, then that is 1 screen where it's your 4K TV, but also these productivity benefits for your home office, so it might start to sound OK). </span></p><p><span style="color: rgb(95, 94, 94); background-color: transparent;">Where they can really help is if/when they open to mass producer OEM partners after 1 or 2 years, then you might see the "Vizio" equivalent for $2500, going down to $1,999 during holiday sales. I think the real back end trick is the size (50"), I am taking a wild guess, but it probably has something to do with the place where they found optimum pricing for screens in Asia because that is probably in the middle of the most popular sizes for flatscreen TVs. So, they basically reengineered the Hub1 to take costs out, and then turbocharged it with heavy ecosystem linked software where they have been building all sorts of both back and front end software to converge there for several years (as demo'ed by their future vision presentations). </span></p>