Dell Answers Questions About Why The XT Tablet PC Costs So Much

Well, kinda, sorta. Dell put out a statement from Glen Keels on what many are seeing as a too high price tag on the new Dell XT Tablet PC. Here’s what he has to say:

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 picked this link up from James Kendrick on jkOnTheRun, and jk did a little math. I’m with jk on this one. I’m seeing significantly more than an 8–13% price difference.