First off, thanks to everyone for your insights on this product. It's a product that lots of us have put effort into and we're happy bring it to market. Since last week, we've gotten over 150 comments from Direct2Dell readers. Much of that feedback involves pricing. The same is true for in the blogosphere. jkOntheRun's James Kendrick mentioned that our starting price was high. So did Larry Dignan from Between the Lines. Kudos to Crunchgear for the best headline on the topic.
So here's what I have to say on the issue. Probably the most important thing to note about tablet PCs is that we are talking about cutting-edge technology here. If we just released the exact same technology as our competitors, we would be missing opportunities to drive this market to the next level – and this is an opportunity we did not want to miss. The result is that our product does carry a slight premium to our competition (emphasis on the word "slight").
We believe that when you take a look at like-to-like configurations AND the incremental technology (that customers have overwhelming told us they want to have), the value equation for the Latitude XT far exceeds that of competitive systems.
We performed a price and feature compare with the Latitude XT, the HP 2710p and the Lenovo X61t. Overall, what I found was that when you adjust for non-standard features such as Dell's standard 3 year standard warranty, the overall price delta was between 8-13%. And while this amount is not trivial, the Latitude XT more that makes up for the difference with additional features customers have told us matter most to them. I have summarized some of these in the table below:
Like I mentioned before, capacitive touch is key. While both Dell and Lenovo offer touch capabilities, it's all about the technology. Dell outperforms Lenovo in customer preference testing, response times and outshines the X61t with our responsive digitizer providing a more accurate experience with fewer false touches and greater durability.
One of the advantages of bringing a product to market after the competition is tapping into how customers use and value the product. Aspects like brightness touch capabilities and weight can really make a difference in real-world environments (hospitals, classrooms, sales engagements, etc.). That's why Dell took great pains to design a system that addresses these key pain points.
You can expect future threads and videos coming out in the near future to further explain and show how the Dell Latitude XT is the new standard for tablet computing. In the meantime, we've also posted more information at www.dell.com/tablet.
Please keep the feedback coming.
