This is rather awkward! A couple months back Motorola released a teaser video for their soon to be released tablet the Xoom. At that time the iPad was its main competitor and as such Motorola spared no expense in highlighting Apples weakness in tech specs. The original iPad lacked cameras, was a little on the bulky side and lacked Flash support. Despite Apple having the industry leading tablet, many thought that Motorola fresh off the success of its Droid line of phones could be the first major competition to the iPad.
Those sentiments were from back at CES 2011 in January, the world seemed like a rosy place open to the oncoming flood of Android tablets. That is, unless Apple was able to release an update iPad prior to the launch of a true Android competitor.
Motorola now finds itself in that terrible predicament. The Xoom held such promise for those looking for a feature rich tablet. It has a dual core processor, front and rear facing cameras, it can run Flash and is backed by Google’s latest Honeycomb OS.
All this was to no avail though, as Apple held a press conference on March 2, 2011 and announced the iPad 2. In his presentation Steve Jobs announced similar specs to the Xoom, a dual core processor, two cameras and all at the unbeatable price of $499 to start.
Motorola is the underdog again, trying to win over the tech elite with a $800 tablet. Why should anyone buy a Xoom when they can just as easily go get the iPad 2 for about half the price? It’s going to take a lot of marketing dollars, bundle deals and consumer ignorance/indifference to make the Xoom a success at this point. Once again competitors find themselves playing catch up to the guys in Cupertino.
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