Doomed Asus tablets to cost $600 and up

Poor Asus. Its upcoming Windows 8 tablets will cost $600 to $1,300, according to a leaked roadmap published by ZDNet (and republished above), which means that almost no one will buy them.

The most expensive one, the Asus Taichi, has two screens — one on either side of its “lid” — so it can work as a tablet or, by folding out the keyboard, as a notebook. No wonder it’s expensive (and I wonder what it weighs, with two LCDs back-to-back).

The high-end pricing will put the tablets well outside the range of competing Android-based tablets, and make them even pricier than Apple’s market-dominating tablet, the iPad.

Microsoft’s own tablet, the Surface, will also be pricey, but probably not that pricey.

When you consider that cheap Android tablets are already available in Fry’s for $80 — and in China for $45 or less — you have to wonder what Asus executives are smoking. I don’t care what kind of feature or quality benefits these tablets offer, there’s no way to justify a 10x price differential.

As ZDNet drily notes, demand will likely be low for these overpriced white elephants.