I am sorry Moto, this would not fly. Too expensive. I am just pissed to think I have told everyone around to wait for it. The next iPad will have all this features at a far better price.
I have to give it to Steve Jobs. They certainly had a better iPad but decided to release something slightly basic first at an awesome price point, make loads of profit then have the ability to match the specs of the new comers who will think they can better the iPad1 specswise
Motorola XOOM priced at $800
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Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#42... and you have to purchase a data plan before you can use WiFi. The iPad is still the only tablet in the history of personal computing that makes any sense.
At the low end $20/month plan, assuming a two year contract, that's $1280 total. Yikes. The pricing psychology of the iPad starting at $500, then relatively small incremental updates that increase the size and give it 3G makes for a much easier sell. The Xoom does look like nice hardware - I just wonder if they'll sell enough of them to reach economies of scale and drive the price down.
After further reading, it appears that you only need to buy one month of Verizon service (no 2-year contract), so the total is $819.
(Would have fixed the parent post but can't edit for some reason...)
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#43This will bomb really badly. I am simply in awe at how far ahead of the competition Apple remains after all these years. I would have thought eventually the smartphone and especially the mp3 player market would've normalized by now but Apple is now telescoping their lead. By the time the iPad 2 ships every Android tablet not even on the market yet will be obsolete by an entire generation.
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#44I'm a huge Android fan and while I would buy a laptop from Apple I wouldn't touch an iOS device due to disagreement over how the Market is handled.
However it doesn't take an Apple fanboi to know this pricing is horrid.
This isn't a laptop. People are not going to shop around on specs. $800 vs $500 for similar functionality is fscking retarded, especially when the $500 device is from the BMW of computers.
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#45I think the products that compete with iphones and ipads point to a fundamental shift in how Apple do things these days: Apple now compete on price. I'm not saying they've given up on their high margins on everything policy. Like other commenters have said, they probably use purchasing power to make up the difference, but they are using price nonetheless. We're so used to Apple being the premium option that we keep o…
I think what we're seeing is that Apple always did compete on price. We just didn't know it until we saw competitors trying and failing to match their prices.
I'm not a hardware expert, but I don't think so. There are two ways to think about this:
a- What would it cost to build a more or less exact hardware replica?
b- What would it cost to build a decent substitute?
I don't even think they were competing on price in the 'a' sense.
But either way, 'b,' is, I think, the important one and Apple certainly weren't competing on price in that sense pre-iphone. You could always get a decent mp3 player or laptop roughly as good as but different to an Apple for a big discount. Still can. If you want to run Windows or Linux, you can do it without hassle on 1/2 - 3/4 of the budget. If you want a music player for jogging, an ipod nano knockoff will do the trick just fine.
If you want an android tablet or phone, you seem to need to pay more for (arguably) less.
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#46This is the practical downside of being too cozy with carriers. A cheaper wifi-only model would be great for consumers but cuts the carriers out of the loop entirely. Probably the same reason there's no 'iPod Touch killer' out there yet. All these companies are in the business of selling equipment to carriers. What the consumer wants is a secondary consideration at best.
This is a huge frustration to me as a developer, I wish I could buy an iPod touch style android device.
Samsung were talking about making a galaxy player, I think they've released it in some places, perhaps not world wide?
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#47This seems pretty crazy, as the comparable iPad (16GB WiFi+3G) retails for $630. It will also be difficult to build up a large install base without a cheaper, wifi-only model. And while at the moment the Xoom has some features the iPad does not (cameras, for example) the inevitable release of a new iPad in a couple months will no doubt erase that advantage, at the same (or lower, per GB) price. I can't imagine what M…
Everybody is getting hung up on the price of this device, which I admit is high, but a comparison to the iPad's price is not fair. As stated below, the closest iPad is $730. Also the hardware is a generation and a half ahead of the iPad. The iPad doesn't even have a camera, very basic need for any kind of video conferencing (Xoom comes with 2). Please see the comparison chart [1] for more details. But yeah, having to…
You can’t buy a $500 Xoom. It’s just not possible. I think that matters a lot, I doubt many people will check specs.
Edit: To expand a little on this point, Apple sold 7.33 million iPads in the holiday quarter and made $4.4 billion in revenue which means that consumers paid about $600 (±$8) on average for an iPad. Considering that, I don’t think it is a wise idea to not at least have a base model that is priced at $600 or less.
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
Must be more to it than that. If it was possible to get a good tablet (of any size) to consumers cheaper than Apple, someone would have. Maybe this project started out with your assumptions and ended up with (possibly unsellable) $800 device.
AFAIK, Apple's supply chain is not only legendary, but they'll commit huge amounts of capital to new hardware products in advance. This allows them to more or less own the output of a given supplier's factory, forcing other companies to pay spot prices for their follow-on products.
Not contradicting you at all, but those of us who have been Apple customers for decades now (cripes) have to smile wryly whenever Apple's supply chain is described as "legendary". Back in the bad old days they never could seem to get supply and demand to match up, so whenever they had a hit, they couldn't capitalize on it as well as they should have.
Everybody knows that Steve restored vision to Apple when he came back, and that Jonathan Ive revolutionized its design language, but fewer people seem to know how much of what makes Apple 2.0 great boils down to the incredibly stable and responsive delivery platform that Tim Cook has built.
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a huge frustration to me as a developer, I wish I could buy an iPod touch style android device.
Samsung were talking about making a galaxy player, I think they've released it in some places, perhaps not world wide?
Only in Korea. No plans for releasing it anywhere else.
Edit: Gadget blogs suck. Everyone I looked at says something different, it might be the case that the Player is also available somewhere in Europe. I can‘t buy it on amazon.de (Germany), though. To continue the theme of this discussion: The price also sucks when compared to the iPod touch (something between 200€ and 260€ for the 8GB model, you pay 230€ for the 8GB iPod touch).
Re: Motorola XOOM priced at $800
#50$800? And if you read the subtext of the picture carefully, it says, "To activate WiFi functionality on this device, a minimum of 1 month data subscription is required." My god, is it rude to just point and laugh?
> "To activate WiFi functionality on this device, a minimum of 1 month data subscription is required."
I'm gobsmacked by that - is there any precedent for it? Anywhere? I've literally never heard of any manufacturer locking Wifi support. I'm almost not believing it yet until I see some kind of other confirmation - I can only think that it was meant to say "Wireless" or "3G" or something else, because locking Wifi is just ridiculous.