“Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc. has again lowered the entry price for its Xoom tablet, rolling out a new ‘family edition’ that will sell for $379 beginning Sunday,” Andrew Dowell reports for The Wall Street Journal.
“While Motorola is pitching the tablet at kids, the only significant hardware difference between the family edition and full-price version is that the new Xoom has 16GB of memory, half the amount as the device Motorola sells for $499,” Dowell reports. “The move to make the Xoom more affordable underscores the difficulty companies are having competing with Apple Inc.’s iPad on anything but price. BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd. And Hewlett-Packard have also cut the prices of their tablets recently.”
Dowell reports, “The iPad has since accounted for some three-quarters of tablet shipments, Apple claims, a figure echoed by others in the technology industry. Even that figure may underplay Apple’s dominance. RIM acknowledged last month that many of the PlayBook tablets it has shipped are sitting around unsold at stores, and other tablets are likely seeing a similar fate. Technology data firm comScore said this week that the iPad accounts for 97% of all Internet traffic from tablets, indicating few others are seeing much use.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: At any price, it’s futureless garbage.
To the landfill, on the way to oblivion.
For just $120 more, I can get a shiny new iPad 2 pre-loaded with iOS 5. Why would I settle for garbage from Motorola when the best tablet on the market is well within reach?
You can buy the current model iPad 2 with 16GB (WiFi only version) for $449 on the Apple Store refurb (Special Deals) page. Or you can get the original iPad with 16GB (WiFi + 3G) for $399, and when it’s available, I’ve seen the original iPad with 16GB (WiFi only) for $299.
Motorola will need a $99 fire sale to clear out inventory.
Or get a new 1st gen 3G iPad 64GB for $479 from AT&T.
http://www.wireless.att.com/cell-phone-service/cell-phone-details/index.jsp?device=Apple®+iPad®+with+Wi-Fi+++3G+64GB+Black&q_sku=sku5110232#fbid=gd8Iu0jbza8
Xooming its way to landfill apocalypse. The last Motorola product I bought was the RAZR. That lasted for all of 5 minutes before I returned it for a refund. If crap had a definition, Motorola would sit atop the pile.
The people interested in this turd think $199 is expensive for a tablet. Why would they pay $379?
Why bother? The Kindle Fire will have little effect on iPad sales, but it is the death knell for Android-based tablets. People who want a real tablet will buy an iPad and people who want an inexpensive reader that can browse the web and run some basic apps will buy the Kindle Fire. There’s no market for the Xoom.
You got it…
Soon, the competition will only go after the tablet niches that Apple intentionally avoids. Kindle Fire (once it is available) will do a good job with the ultra low end cheap tablet niche. There is no way to go head-to-head with iPad.
What will be interesting to see is if Google keeps developing Android as a tablet OS as well as a phone OS, or if it drops tablet development altogether.
Which could leave the Kindle Fire in a bit of a pickle.
Not so much, because Amazon took a cut of an older stable version of Android (2.3, I believe) and customized it beyond recognition (as Android) to be their Kindle Fire OS. It’s basically a whole different OS. Any near-term improvements to Kindle will be off that software base, not from a newer version of Android such as “Ice Cream Sandwich.”
In the long term, Amazon is probably looking for another solution anyways. Maybe they will buy the Palm WebOS assets from HP.
Amazon is the competition here; the Android platform will never have focus as long as it is malleable to the various hardware vendors.
Amazon has what Apple has and these other vendors don’t; the content. Amazon is going to go after the cheap market and will do well compared to the other vendors who think that fighting over hardware specs and price is the solution alone.
An old adage comes to mind, “The most expensive suit I own cost the least. I never wear it.”
+1!!
POS. just give it up motorola.
Aiming it at kids! THAT’S got to work, right? I mean, kids have no sense, right?
Will someone be taking them to court doe child abuse?
The mind reels to think that soon, Motorola reps will be hanging around school yards, trying to entice kids to ‘try Xoom’ – with any luck, Xoom will be declared a ‘controlled substance’ and use of, or possession of, will be criminal.
Come on… Xoom is the opposite of being “addictive.”
THE NATURAL CYCLE
The little Green Garbage Can is the first step to the land fill the world over.
Xoom go boom. Bust>rust>dust. Buh-bye.
I have a cheaper tablet that has the same features as the xoom.. it is made from wood.
Not cheap enough for how cheap it is.