With the Surface tablet coming to be the next big tablet, the market research company IDC has stated that Microsoft is expected to produce a little over 3 million surface tablets. The plans are to have a few million in the calendar year of 2012 which would be a combination of x86 and ARM versions. IDC is also stating that it plans on making a cheaper version of the tablet running about $199 to go up against the Kindle Fire and Nook tablets already on the market. There is also a speculation of a possible subscription that would also get you a surface tablet. So it seems you can buy it out right or get it on a subscription just like what Microsoft was doing with the Xbox 360. So this would not be uncommon for Microsoft to do such a thing. So based on the market research company if Microsoft decides to go this way I would expect that they could actually sell a lot of these tablets especially if they do a subscription plan.
