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."

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.

Damn...

[lolololol]

Why can't we get some decent competition for the iPad? The iPad2 will probably be released around the same time, or shortly after, and be the same price as the current iPad, blowing this out of the water.

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

[Enderandrew]

62% of iPad customers apparently. At least, 62% of the next run will be 3G models. I haven't seen sales breakdowns anywhere.

http://www.cultofmac.com/analyst-62-of-first-run-ipad-2s-will-be-3g-and-16-verizon/80752 [cultofmac.com]

And according to this survey, the $830 iPad is the most popular model.

http://www.v3.co.uk/v3/news/2274007/context-ipad-3g-sales-uk [v3.co.uk]

Re:Even Moto can't get costs down

[sootman]

Actually, it was five years ago, and it did go this way: [macworld.com]

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: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.