The tablet PC and smartphone markets are extremely competitive with new products being released all the time, and some companies understandably prove to be more successful than others. This increased competition has led to the BlackBerry Z10 and Microsoft Surface RT seeing price drops already.

Both BlackBerry and Microsoft has recently been cutting prices of certain products in an attempt to boost flagging hardware sales, and Microsoft has dropped the price of the 32GB version of the Surface RT down to £279 from £400 in the United Kingdom. The company has also dropped the price of the 64GB version down to £359.

This comes after Microsoft also dropped the price of the device in the US back in May, and a few days ago we told you about the latest price cuts for the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone in the country. This can now be picked up for only $49 with a new two year contract that compared to $199 at its launch.

Both of these devices have been developed by the two companies to showcase their latest software, but have had to compete with the likes of Apple and Samsung that account for a large percentage of the markets.

An analyst highlights the fact that going up against these two heavyweights is difficult for any company, especially when they have been dominating their sectors for a while now. At the time of writing it is not clear if BlackBerry will begin cutting the asking price of the Z10 in other markets, as the US has always been seen as the marker to seeing how the new platform is doing.

The company did say that they had shifted one million BlackBerry Z10s during the first months of this year, but it will be the following months after the handset has been available in the US for a while that many will be waiting to see how the device is doing.

Recently there have been some job losses over the US launch of the device that is seemingly turning sour, and the Microsoft Surface RT has a similar battle on its hands going up against the iPad and the numerous Android devices that are available.

The device uses a scaled down version of the Windows 8 operating system, and during the first three months of 2013 it is believed that 49.2 million tablets were shifted, but only 900,000 of these are thought to be Surface RTs.

Do you think these two devices have failed?

Source: BBC.