Motorola's XOOM Tablet To Cost $799; Wi-Fi Requires 3G Activation?

WrongSizeGlass writes "The price of Motorola's XOOM Tablet has been leaked in a Best Buy ad. The $799 Android 3-enabled tablet will be available starting Feb 24th. Though the price may seem a bit high, the most surprising detail is that activating the Xoom's Wi-Fi will require signing up for at least one month of Verizon's 3G service. Let's hope the fine print in the Best Buy ad turns out to be a typo."

Comments

At this rate

[Anubis350]

The iPad2 is going to murder the flagship Android tablets... shame, I really want an Android tablet, But give a wifi only version in the same price range as the wifi iPad! I only need to pay for one bloody data connection, and I already have one on my phone!

Re:At this rate

[Gravatron]

I think the eeepad transformer, also a honeycomb tablet, was shooting for a $400 price range. Which is about all I'm willing to spend on one.

Re:At this rate

[Renderer of Evil]

This is MP3 wars all over again. Steady platform growth and incremental feature updates is what benefits Apple and leaves a trail of iKillers in its path.

While Android Tablet companies are trying to blow their wad on a single device that's spec'd out with last week's technology, Apple is more interested in investing into long-term platform development, rather than doing unnecessary weekly hardware refreshes. "Tegra 2. Flavor of the week!" Who cares? Not the majority of people.

The important takeaway from this is that it's a marathon, not a sprint. This is where Motorola, Toshiba, Samsung, et al are failing. They don't give a shit about "openness" or "Android." They want to ship a number of devices this quarter, forget about it and then ship some more next quarter. Especially when they're not making any money from updates or app sales. Any bugfixes, updates, recalls, or any type of customer interaction is cutting into their already razor-thin margins.

Apple has healthy margins so it's better for them to keep providing updates to old hardware. It's all about the platform.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[caywen]

Psychologically, that price is way high. There's a reason Apple wanted to target a $499 price point with the iPad. I think once they start getting into the mid-range laptop price range, it becomes a different kind of purchasing decision. At least, that's the reaction I've had as well as a few others I know. We were pretty excited about the Xoom, but once it comes time to lay down $800+, it stops being an impulse buy.

I hope this does not start an upward trend in price for tablets. Large-ish android phones will easily cannibalize its big brothers if the price differential is that great.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[Protonk]

Right. 799 is a low end of the estimates people had for the iPad last year. Now that flash memory and display technologies have had about 12 months to mature from the introduction of the ipad, prices for competitors should at least be lower than Apple's price point for the low end 3G ipad. I don't think it is completely fair to judge the XOOM against the wifi ipad since I think all of the XOOMs will have 3g, but 150 dollars more than Apple is nuts.

Even Moto can't get costs down

[mveloso]

You know it's bad when even Moto can't get enough volume to beat the iPad on price.

Let's see:

Apple: I want to buy 45 million IPS screens. Oh, and can you throw in 45 million pieces of 32gb of flash, a bunch of components like batteries etc? And be sure to give us a good price, since we're basically going to be making you rich for the next 5 years if everything goes right.
Supplier CEO: sure, here's my private line. iI you need anything, even a Big Mac or a foot massage we'll send it right over.

Everyone else: I'm making a tablet, and am looking at around 50k pieces to start
Supplier sales rep: uh, I'll get back to you once we're done with this Apple order. Have you tried tier 3 manufacturer around the block? Tier 2 is busy, since we're subcontracting their excess capacity.

Re:Even Moto can't get costs down

[UnknowingFool]

Or it could have gone this way:
(1 year ago)
Apple: We like the 10" screen you make; we'd like to buy out all of them for the next year.
Supplier CEO: Ka-Ching!

(6 months ago)
Everyone else: Hey we'd like to make a small order for 10" screens. We've looked at the market and yours is the only one that's ready for production and has our price point.
Supplier CEO: We're all sold out. Sorry.
Everyone else: $&^%!

Re:Even Moto can't get costs down

[sootman]

Actually, it was five years ago, and it did go this way:

On the operational side of the house, as you probably remember, we've historically entered into certain agreements with different people to secure supply and other benefits. The largest one in the recent past has been, we signed a deal with several flash [memory] suppliers back in the end of 2005 that totaled over a billion dollars, because we anticipated that flash would become increasingly important across our entire product line and increasingly important to the industry. And so we wanted to secure supply for our company.

—Tim Cook, Apple COO

That's just one example. I'm pretty sure they did the same for screens and lots of other important bits. Steve Jobs gets all the press but Mr. Cook is definitely pulling his weight.

Re:it's android...

[pablomme]

You forget about this: http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/11/01/19/2322215/Motorola-Sticks-To-Guns-On-Locking-Down-Android

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[peragrin]

That's right apple always overcharges for a premium and over price their gadgets anyways.

However Since the xoom is $150 more than the similar ipad maybe people should stop assuming that apple overcharges for hardware. To Date not one tablet competitor has been able to meet apple's price point by a significant margin. The galaxy Tab is close but then again it has a 3" smaller screen.

Re:Who would buy this?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Who would buy this?

Several million people.

When $600 gets you a six-core desktop with 8 GB of RAM and a decent video card, why would you waste your time with a crippled tablet that costs more? The PC is a versatile machine that can do *anything*

... except be portable.

I'm against tablets costing over $400

Miniaturization costs money and tablets require some extra R&D because they need an OS/apps that aren't already on store shelves.

It's fun to rant and all, but products aren't priced just by how many FLOPs they perform.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[Protonk]

Let's see, for that price I can get a 17" laptop with a triple core CPU, 4GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, lightscribe DL DVDRW. Oh, and I can watch a movie without having to hold it, read an ebook without having to hold it, and use full fledged applications on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157424&cm_re=17%22_laptop-_-34-157-424-_-Product

Why folks would buy a tablet they have to hold with way less functionality, for more money, I just don't get.

I think if your operating philosophy requires that you conclude tens of millions of people making a specific purchase decision must be idiots you should re-evaluate that philosophy because it obviously provides little to no predictive power.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[Enderandrew]

I had really hoped the price would be closer to $500, but if we're comparing apples to Apples, then the iPad isn't $500.

This is a 3G + Wifi 32GB model. So the comparable iPad is $730. The Xoom is $70 more, has 4 times the RAM, two HD cameras, a SD slot, and a dual-core processor.

And I keep hearing stories how the average iPad purchase was over $800 with accessories. So the price is high, but not ridiculously high.

That being said, Motorolla needs to offer a base model (Wifi only) for under $600 if they want to compete.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[93 Escort Wagon]

Let's see, for that price I can get a 17" laptop with a triple core CPU, 4GB RAM, 640GB hard drive, lightscribe DL DVDRW. Oh, and I can watch a movie without having to hold it, read an ebook without having to hold it, and use full fledged applications on it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834157424&cm_re=17%22_laptop-_-34-157-424-_-Product

Why folks would buy a tablet they have to hold with way less functionality, for more money, I just don't get.

Remind us - how much does that laptop weigh again? And how thick is it? You pay a significant premium for portability - in terms of higher cost, lower performance, or both.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[rsilvergun]

See here for a complete explanation.

Re:The price might seem a bit high

[obarthelemy]

More likely, they factored in
- huge quantity discounts on all parts, especially screens
- good revenues from ancillary sales from their various "stores". Android thingies cannot really do that (fewer stores, sparser stores, revenues are mainly Google's and others', not manufacturers')
- need for a low-end, cheap version to advertize, betting their customers would go for the high-end versions, whose margins are way higher ($15 extra materials costs, $300 extra price)

Re:Simple pass...

[JesseDegenerate]

technically even an ipad can do what you just said. (connect to a external display (via dock to component, composite, vga or HDMI adapter) with an external bluetooth keyboard.) just so ya know.