Motorola Xoom sales numbers flag. Bad sign for Android tablets?
The Motorola Xoom is struggling to gain purchase in the tablet market, according to a new report from Deutsche Bank.
This week Deutsche Bank analysts estimated that Motorola sold about 100,000 Xoom units since the tablet launch in February. By comparison, Apple – the current king of the tablet heap – reportedly sold somewhere between 400,000 to 500,000 iPad 2 units in the first weekend that device was available. So what do the disappointing sales say about the future of the tablet market?
Well, over at the Fortune website, Seth Weintraub admits things look grim for the Xoom – but warns against counting out tablets running Google's Android OS.
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"It is important to remember that the first Android phone, the G1, wasn't a critical success for the first year of its existence. Google kept iterating however and wound up with significant success with the Droid about a year later," Weintraub writes. "With about 50 new tablets coming down the pipe running Honeycomb, it is still way too early to count Google out."
The Xoom has received decidedly mixed marks from reviewers, who have praised the "sophisticated" Android Honeycomb 3.0 OS, but questioned whether the Motorola tablet is worth the hefty price tag.
"[T]here isn't much here for consumers right now," wrote one top reviewer. "The Android Market is almost devoid of tablet applications, the OS feels buggy and unfinished, and the hardware has pain points that we find troubling. And that's to say nothing of the pricing and carrier commitments being asked of first-time buyers." Check out the complete Xoom review roundup here.
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