“It promises Moto’s Android tablet will be in stores a couple of weeks from now, decorated with a daunting $799.99 sticker,” Savov reports. “That price agrees with one of our earliest leaks on the matter, purportedly from Verizon’s own systems.”
Full article, with photo of the ad here.
In a companion article, Engadget also reports that Verizon seems to be locking WiFi on Motorola Xoom until suckers buy one month of data service, based on fine print in the ad that reads rather clearly, “To activate WiFi functionality on this device, a minimum of one month data subscription is required.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: DOA. But, Apple likely does thank Motorola for running that nice iPad ad for them during the Super Bowl.
Put these people down on the list of initial buyers at $800.
– Eric Schimdt
– Larry Page
– Sergey Brin
Errrr…that’s it I think…
Crickets….
Motorola should stick to Walkie talkies.
What do they know about OSes and computers?
everyone’s X zooms outbofnthe picture.
Hahaha…
good luck Moto
Yowza!
Can’t wait to see one, although I’ll probably have to wait to actually see on in the wild!
I’m assuming it’s a typo in the ad, but it says to get wi-fi you have to buy a monthly subscription!
It’s too zune to tell if this will be a hit!
I think I start camping out Best Buy, NOT
Some through the Steelers lousy play I miss the commercial, but the Black Eye Pea were pretty good.
It can’t be $800. That has to be an intentional misdirection. These Android tablets have to start at $400 to get real traction. $500 if you want to pick up the anti-Apple crowd. Any more and they.re DOA with everyone.
Btw, I watched that Xoom ad at a Supetbowl party with about 20 others. (I was the only geek.) Everyone was into all the commercials. After that ad someone said, “I guess they’re supposed to be in a steril environment?”. I asked if anyone picked up the “1984” ad or Apple references. No one even knew what I was talking about. They had no clue the ad was referencing Apple in any way.
My wife walked into the room while that commercial was playing. She said, “Look an iPad!”
Pretty funny.
Typo. I think they mean $80!
That’s what happens when a bunch of ad people have tunnel vision and think everyone knows the 1984 commercial.
Not!
Only Apple fans from way back know it and other ad people.
What a complete waste of money for Moto, but good for Apple.
I think years ago Steve Jobs planted people at all of these tech companies. Their job, run that company into the ground.
I did notice one thing. MOT expects that there will be one Xoom to millions of iPads.
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People – stop! You should love our opponents not hate them![?]
They used to be one of Apple’s partner for CPU delivery? What’s wrong with you?:)
A little bit dignity for somebody who, overall, end-up like that.
Apple always take what they want’s… And they… Hmmmm… They just a loser!
Xoom = exhume, as in remove from a grave? What a stupid name! Perfect for the product!
Thing is after it has been exhumed it is still dead!
Xoom = Moto (tablet entry) = still dead! Nice!
I’m surprised that Apple didn’t run any iPad ads during the Superbowl. Then again, Motorola did it for them, so they didn’t have to.
I was at a party, paid close attention to the reaction of the others, mostly the reaction was, “huh?” “OK what was that an ad for?” or “I don’t get it, why are all those people wearing white?”
So much for the Apple Tax.
I was in a crowd at a Superbowl party and most people thought it was an ad for the iPad. Good job Moto!
@Tigercliff
I think they’re banking on the anti-Apple crowd being willing to pay a premium for being anti-Apple.
The exoom spot during the Superbowl offered no unique user benefit whatsoever, other than not wearing a white outfit as the extras did. What a huge waste of money! Motorola will have to sell many thousands of Xumes just to pay for it. Interestingly, at the halftime show, an army of similarly white-clad extras danced around the stage as the essence of cool, subconsciously undermining the message of the Moto commercial. Tough xhit, Motorola.
It’s stuff like that which will help S.J. in his recovery. After all, laughter is the best medicine!
To be fair, this is a 32GB tablet with 3G and an equivalent iPad would cost $729, but…..
Why they wouldn’t come out with a wifi only 16 GB model to match the entry level iPad is beyond me.
Of course, the wifi/data plan fiasco is classic telco cluelessness.
WIFI data? Wifi is free! This can’t be right, it must be 3G you’re talking about.
But… but… Android is OPEN!! Open always wins!!!! Like linux!
/sarcasm
Saw the ad with my family, asked my mom — who’s pretty tech savvy — what she thought was going on in it. “Were all those people listening to something that made them into robots?”
Good job Moto. You made a commercial for the commenters on Gizmodo, none of whom can afford your tablet.
There’s no 16GB WiFi version… That we don’t know of.
The price makes it DOA… Unless there is a subsidy plan?
A $20.00 Verizon charge just to purchase the WIFi only option? Welcome to Verizon, let us hope that any charging has to be approved by Apple otherwise, this crap could be coming to a Verizon iPhone near you! Seriously, know one knows the specifics of how many versions of zooms there will be, what they will cost and what Verizon charges for WiFi… Just as nobody predicted 6 versions of the iPad: WiFi 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 3G 16, 32, 64 GB. The price of the iPad rumor… below a $1000.00 code for $999.00
Let’s wait and see… and THEN WE TRASH!
Zume/Zune/Whatever
“You made a commercial for the commenters on Gizmodo, none of whom can afford your tablet.”
Best analysis of the ad I’ve seen yet
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The Xoom looks to be an awesome tablet in its own right. I want one. I also really like Motorola’s new Atrix phone – the laptop dock idea is pretty slick. But Motorola really has their head up their rear end when it comes to marketing. $800 for the Xoom. Really!? Like that’s gonna compete with the iPads. Not. I’d prefer the Xoom, but not at the price point — that will drive me to an iPad. Perhaps I’ll wait for the 2nd gen iPad — it will likely be similar or better equipped hardware wise than the Xoom for the same amount of money or less. And it’s a known commodity.
And $500 for that laptop dock (keyboard, battery, screen)!? Heck, that’s 1/2 the price of a Macbook Air and the darn thing doesn’t even have a cpu. What is Motorola smoking? They are cranking out some nice stuff, but it will never sell if they can’t get the price point right.
@ Rick
I agree with some of what you said, I am interested in Honeycomb as well. But at this price, its a non-starter. Its 800 bucks that from a user persepctive the only difference to the $729 ipad is the two cameras. Yes processors are faster, awesome, but what does that buy me, access to Honeycomb? If running honeycomb requires this faster gear than how does that compete with iOS which does not require the faster gear?
So what am i paying for?
And as someone else has stated,all of these Android based tabs are over priced. Android is free a la Google, subsidized by search ads. Why ami therefore paying the same price if not more than the ipad which R&D had to go into to make and is not subsidized by ads based on search?
Xoom. Really bad name. Never give your product a name that customers will be unsure how to pronounce it. And, yeah, the commercial was a complete WASTE for Moto. I agree Xoom = DOA.
@Joe
Well, the hardware is important. It’s not everything, but it is certainly important. The reason is that technology is changing so rapidly. What we expect our gadgets to do today isn’t anywhere near as taxing as what we will expect a similar gadget to do in a year. With 2-year commitments on nearly anything connected to a wireless carrier, it’s important to buy the latest and greatest in order to ensure that it will not be outdated in a year.
My iPhone 3G is definitely showing its age. iOS 4 is just a joke on it — so much so that I went back to 3.1.3. But iOS 4 works extremely well on my wife and daughter’s new iPhone 4s. Bottom line is that my 3G is only 2 1/2 years old and it feels like an antique now. The tablet market is really evolving. Hence, I believe it’s really important to buy something with very current hardware specs. That’s why I like the Xoom, and that’s why I’ll wait for the 2nd gen iPad.
from XOOM, does oe get the pronunciation Zoom?
Shouldn’t that be pronounced “Exhumed”? As in to dig up something old!
Motorola can’t compete so they mimic in a tasteless sort of way. They promote their Xoom for exactly the type of freedom and creativity that the iPad already performs. The tasteless part is their weak attempt to capture the 1984-esque feel which didn’t work at all.
At the end, I was not impressed or even interested and left thinking, “Another iPad clone competitor.”
For years Apple rivals have spent millions educating their customers to look for cheap (see the PC ads) vs Apple.
Now they want them to do a 180 and pay MORE.
good luck with that.
The reason they call it XOOM…
it’s the sound of money being vacuumed out of your pocket.
It seems that no matter how you put it, it all amounts to APPLE WINS!!!
Apple product = Winner
Apple strategy = Winner
Apple = Winner
Until otherwise PROVEN!!!!!
$800 that’s really goof news for Apple. I didn’t really believe Steve Jobs when he said that they had prices the iPad really aggressively. And I still think that the iPad cost allot of money but seeing the price tags on all these other tablets makes me realise that Steve was telling the truth. They have really taken everything they have learned with the iPhone and iPod and applied that to the iPad and that allows them to really keep the cost down. Apple makes everything themselves which in this case is a big advantage. The other companies have to buy parts like the Tegra CPU and pay Nvidia and Nvidia is interested in margins so the cost goes up for every part for the other tablets manufacturers. Apples move to buy their own semiconductor company was genius. They can develop 1 chip and use it across every device saving them the RnD money in a heart beat. The more Apple scale, more products, more devices the more benefit they get from developing their own chip. It’s really fantastic. They are true forward thinkers at Apple.
I always thought there should be a hi-def widescreen version of the iPad. It would be perfect for watching video while traveling. The size factor would be smaller than letter-size, making it lighter than the current iPad.