<i>&gt; I&#x27;m aware of the shortcomings of the ARM-based Windows notebooks. But they mostly failed because there are no great &quot;universal&quot; apps.</i><p>Smartbooks were not Windows notebooks. They still failed. Why the Surface RT failed is another matter, but the major reasons included (a) price and (b) the inability to run traditional Windows 32 software.<p><i>&gt; That Core M was $280 (that&#x27;s what the OEMs pay when they bundle them in their devices, possibly with some light negotiation).</i><p>Hard to know what OEMs pay for Intel chips, and unless you work for one, you probably don&#x27;t. (Even if you do work for one, you probably don&#x27;t.) However, it&#x27;s not going to be $280 on a $599 selling price.<p>In fact, Intel listed the Core M with a &quot;Recommended Customer Price&quot; of $281. Selling them by the thousand to OEMs, I&#x27;d guess it might get half that, though I&#x27;d be interested in <i>hard</i> evidence to the contrary.<p>Looking on amazon.com, most Core M laptops seem to be heavily discounted, possibly because they don&#x27;t seem to offer particularly good performance for the money. The Lenovo Core M Yoga that hit the UK market first (at the end of 2014) roughly halved in price within months....