At the Consumer Electronics Show today, Motorola officially launched the XOOM tablet to be available for purchase this quarter with 3G and next quarter in 4G. No pricing has been announced yet, but the device is already on the Motorola website. This iPad challenger is the first table to run Google Android 3.0 Honeycomb (also officially announced today at CES).
The Xoom was demoed last month by Google VP Andy Rubin (a 2010 Genius 30 Award winner) and Motorola began tease marketing the Xoom, mocking the iPad for being “like a giant iPhone.” The carrier for the Xoom will be Verizon which I’m not personally very pleased about, but it’s worth considering.
The specs on the XOOM are nothing short of impressive… not only does it run on the Android OS (which we are extremely enthusiastic about), Motorola claims that with one charge, the Xoom will get up to 10 hours of video playback, has a front and rear facing camera, a 10.1″ display with 1280×800 resolution, adaptive lighting, accelerometer and more:
What do you think, is it an iPad killer with all of these features? Was this Motorola announcement worth the long wait? Would you consider buying the Xoom when released to market?
Fred Romano
January 6, 2011 at 8:23 am
I am so glad I have not purchased an iPad yet! I was waiting for the new Android tablets and this one from Motorola looks amazing. I love the stand in the photo, I hope its also a charger… Thanks for sharing Lani.
Pat Hallesy
January 6, 2011 at 6:51 pm
The stand in the photo IS also a charger!
Real Estate Coaching and Marketing Tools
January 8, 2011 at 11:45 am
I have an iPad and a Droid phone so I feel like I’m cheating on someone in this relationship. I would love an iPhone, but not on the AT&T network. I can be suaded to sell my iPad for this device if I can log into my MLS which is not safari compatible. Plus, there’s so much flash content on the web that I can’t see on my iPad which would be another difference and reason to jump on to the Xoom ship. iPad has an app for browsing flash content but reviewers of the app skyfire are not raving fans.
The iPad was a novelty when it first came out and made a lot of money, but in being first to market and with competitors with big budgets, they should have expected healthy competition. As a consumer, I rather enjoy seeing new gadgets. There’s always eBay and a way to trade up or down.
JB
January 15, 2011 at 1:46 am
Apple fanboys will never admit there is a lot better tech offered out there (phones, tablets, notebooks), admitting it will make them regret paying so much money for overprice products so instead they will defend their supreme lord and commander S.Jobs
Its a good thing that Google is going against Apple since Microsoft is too busy generically making money to correctly innovate. We will see a result of better products offered to the public regardless of which side you are on.
So far Apple relies way too much in their marketing team telling their loyal zombies what to buy. They slap the same software (IOS is still relatively the same) in a prettier sparkling hardware (like OMG! look at the Retina display) with one key addition to over promote ( facetime camera, thinness) and sell it for whatever price they want. Its genius!, they will never bow down to offer discounts in their products even for Black Friday. but this has given them disadvantage because this bossy attitude only worked against windows.
As far as Android, it was nonexistent until powerhouses: Google, Verizon, and Motorola put it in the face of the earth through 2010. It hasn’t existed for long and its already taking 26% of smartphones market ( surpassed Apple Iphone) The OS is refreshing (fast, live wallpapers, notebook like experience in the palm of your hand and professional) So far everybody in the tech market has jumped in the bandwagon and offered hardware wired with Google OS, including markets in US, Asia and Europe. It has been innovative but it lacks history and thus a higher support of applications and a way to go against Apple’s successful Itunes.
I personally don’t care what brand i carry in my pocket as long as it is truly innovative and surpasses the others offered.
I’d simply would like to point some issue I had with Apple being too good to give us a discount for tech that is offered cheaper and better from other sources. This is what Android is doing, and more importantly I would like for Apple to actually come up with something better than Android, then in return Android come up with something better than Apple. This is how we keep a healthy level of competition going that benefits us in the end.
The Introduction of Android will make sure Apple is in its toes and will require Google to actually finish this product before they move on to the next “Big thing” if they want a successful product.
So far Apple is just pretty but that’s about it, it is starting to look like Apple is the new Windows falling behind Google’s new Apple-like software done right and without sprinkles and childish rubbish in it.