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."

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!

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: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: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: $&^%!

Blame Apple for the price.

[jbplou]

The authors question of if Apple should be blamed for the overpriced Xoom is ridiculous. 1 year ago nobody thought you could create a viable tablet for $500 and Apple created the whole market overnight. Look up articles from January 2010 most of the tech analysts were projecting an Apple tablet for over $1000 some as high as $2000. Apple created the market, there is no excuse for Motorola to overprice. They have big buying power and a third party gave them an OS for orders of magnitude less money than Apple paid to develop iOS.

If this is the best Android can muster iPad1 will eat its lunch, iPad2 will dominate it if they keep price down. Right now the Playbook looks like stiffer compitition because of the business user sales channel Blackberry has available.

Xoom +$800 price tag = doa