Hasta La Gadget!

Verizon’s first Xoom ad is out leaving little doubt about how the company plans to market Motorola’s new tablet. While the Honeycomb slab might lack the Droid branding, VZW looks set to maintain the overtly machismo tone that helped sell so many Android handsets over the last year while dismissing any of that cerebral nonsense preferred by Motorola. And really, who amongst us, man or woman, can resist the temptation of strapping on an $800 jetpack come thursday?

Verizon Xoom teaser ad will eat you up (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 02:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon’s webpage dedicated to the Xoom has just gone up and one of our eagle-eyed readers has already spotted a disquieting bit of small print: “Adobe Flash expected Spring 2011.” You don’t sit around expecting what you already have, so that leads us to conclude that the Xoom, the mighty iPad-slaying, Honeycomb-bringing, world-changing tablet… won’t have Flash at launch. The version of Adobe’s rich media player it’s waiting for is most probably 10.2 for mobile devices, scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks, which should mean first-day buyers this Thursday will get a limited-time premium feature on their tablets: no Flash ads.

[Thanks, Chris]

Update: Motorola has confirmed this, in a very roundabout fashion. The company’s statement in full:

“Motorola XOOM will include full support for Adobe(R) Flash(R) Player(R) for accessing the rich video and animations of the web, to be available after launch.”

Motorola Xoom will ship without Flash support on February 24th, expects it in ‘Spring 2011’ (updated) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 06:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No more stunt prices, no more premature web appearances, this (we hope) is finally Best Buy’s fully official listing for the Motorola Xoom. It brings no great surprises to those who’ve been tracking the tablet’s progress to retail shelves, offering first dibs to buyers willing to make the effort and pre-order one in store today, with full availability coming on Thursday, February 24th. The $800 3G-equipped model is accompanied on Best Buy’s site by a $40 portfolio case, a $50 basic charging dock, a $130 stereo speaker dock, and a $70 Bluetooth keyboard, but there’s no sighting of the cheaper WiFi-only Xoom. There was some suspicion that the $600 SKU would launch a little later on and that is indeed what appears to be happening. One final note of caution: even if you’re intending to use the Xoom as a pure WiFi-only device, remember that you’ll be required to activate data with Verizon for at least a month first — don’t ask us why.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Motorola Xoom up for in-store pre-order at Best Buy, $800 for Thursday availability originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 03:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola’s Xoom tablet will cost more than the iPad, but the mobile company feels confident that it can compete with Apple.

The Xoom will go on sale for $800 in the United States, Motorola mobility chief Sanjay Jha told The Wall Street Journal, and it will include 32GB of storage and compatibility with the new 4G network.

Jha believes that 4G compatibility will make the Xoom worth the extra money for consumers. By way of comparison, the 32-GB iPad with 3G compatibilty costs $730.

“We felt that our ability to deliver 50Mb/s would justify the $799 price point,” Jha said. “It is 32GB with 3G and a free upgrade to 4G. Being competitive with iPad is important. We feel that from the hardware and capabilities we deliver we are at least competitive and in a number of ways better [than the iPad].”

While the inclusion of 4G compatibility does appear to add extra value to the Xoom, Motorola still can’t match the lower starting price of Apple’s iPad: $500 for the Wi-Fi model. Jha said Motorola would eventually offer a 32-GB Wi-Fi-only model as well that would cost around the same as Apple’s 32-GB iPad with Wi-Fi, which costs $600.

It’s unclear when the Xoom will ship, though a leaked Best Buy ad suggests Feb. 24.

I’m not convinced customers will be attracted to the Xoom’s $800 price tag because of the 4G spec. U.S. carriers only recently launched their 4G networks, and until they mature, I don’t think people are going to care about 4G versus 3G. The average customer is going to be attracted to the starting price, and $500 seems to be the sweet spot that Apple has nailed.

What are your thoughts on Xoom pricing? Chime in with your comments below.

See Also:

• Report: Motorola Xoom Tablet to Cost a Hefty $800
• Report: Motorola Xoom, HTC Thunderbolt Due This Month
• Motorola Previews New Android Tablet, Droid Smartphone

Photo of Motorola’s Xoom tablet demonstrated at CES 2011: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Motorola’s Xoom will cost a tad more than the competition, but company co-CEO Sanjay Jha has an explanation for why that might be: he told reporters that the Android Honeycomb tablet’s price is justified by the promise of speedy 4G internet. Of course, the $800 Xoom doesn’t actually come with 4G connectivity out of the gate, but Jha told reporters that the Xoom’s LTE upgrade will be free, and that wonder of wonders, the tablet will be capable of pulling down 50 megabit per second speeds. Someone might want to check Sanjay’s math — sure, in the midst of a Verizon fog at CES 2011, we were able to manage 33Mbps, but we typically get less than half that speed on a day-to-day basis.

Motorola’s Sanjay Jha on Xoom: ‘Our ability to deliver 4G justifies the $799 price point’ originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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