Motorola Xoom: $800, WiFi Intentionally Crippled Without Data Plan
Anyone thinking Android tablets were going to take a significant bite out of the iPad's sales woke up to reality today when a Best Buy ad was leaked showing the Motorola Xoom tablet is going to be priced at a whopping $799, and unable to use WiFi unless the buyer subscribes to a data plan.
$800 and the proud owner of a Xoom tablet won't even be able to access the Internet. Way to go Motorola!
Android tablets to this point have been little more than a joke, running versions of Android OS that were not made for tablets and as such do not feature the full Android experience. The most current version of Android for smart phones is 2.3, but some tablets are running versions as old as 1.5. This resulted in angry customers, buggy apps (on the few that can actually be installed), no GPS, and a ton of headaches.
Cut to Android 3.0, nicknamed Honeycomb, which is the first version of Android specifically tuned by Google for tablets. Honeycomb will be able to run all Android Marketplace apps, as well as other goodies designed just for tablets. The thought of low cost Android tablets competing with the iPad has many people excited.
However, the Motorola Xoom, which will be the first Android 3.0 tablet, is outrageously priced at $800, $300 more than the iPad's starting price. But the fact that WiFi is intentionally crippled unless the buyer also signs up for a data plan is just horrible marketing.
What Android needs is a low priced tablet, $299 or less. Once they can get a price under $200 we'll see tablets absolutely everywhere, in hospitals, schools, and in the workplace. Whether it will be Android tablets, iPads, Windows, or some other OS, we'll see. But an $800, crippled tablet is going to be a disaster.
(Disclosure, I own both an iPad and an Android phone, and love both. I had an Archos 7 first, hated it. I had nothing but problems and it spurned me on to just bite the bullet and get an iPad.)
Huge selection of android tablets
4 comments:
Amen. to. that. I've had 5 Android tablets. 5. And they've all been awful pieces of third-party crippled crap. Rooted or not. Android 2.1+ might be an okay platform for a tablet if they would just leave. it. alone.
Third parties (besides Apple): make your useless software *optional*, leave the OS ALONE, stop adding junk like webcams, ethernet ports (yea, had one of those too), 20 USB slots (1 is fine), and keep the price at or below 200..then I guarantee you'll outsell Apple.
I think the only real question I have left about the Xoom is how much Motorola stock should I short?
$799 for the 3g 32gig Xoom is $70 more than the comparable iPad. Considering the Xoom will ship with a dual core processor, HMDI output, etc... $70 is fairly reasonable.
However, requiring a 3g plan to enable wifi is freaking ridiculous.
One thing to keep in mind when comparing the Xoom to current iPad specs is that the iPad 2 will be out shortly (the press conference is rumored to be in March and the unit ships in April). Nobody knows the iPad 2 specs for certain, but it's rumored to also have a dual core CPU, and we know it will have at least 1 camera as well, so there's likely to be little, if any, improvement on the specs of the Xoom over the iPad 2.
Post a Comment