Motorola Xoom - Bad Timing, High Price, Complex Interface

Xoom price = $800, $70 above 32-gig iPad. + iPad 2 about to launch. + Honeycomb a complex interface compared to iOS. NYTimes: "Starting Thursday, you’ll be able to buy one of the most eagerly awaited iPad rivals: the Motorola Xoom. Like most iPad aspirants, this one runs Google’s Android software — but the Xoom is the first that runs Android 3.0 (code-named Honeycomb), which Google designed for tablets instead of phones."

HP TouchPad and Other Tablets vs. the Advantaged iPad

Michael Hickins, WSJ: "Hewlett-Packard announced its entry into the mobile device space today, but is entering a market already crowded with strong contenders. The market, currently dominated by Apple’s iPad (which hogged approximately 87 percent of the worldwide market in 2010, according to research firm IDC), already includes Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, and will count the likes of Motorola Mobility Holdings, Research in Motion and Dell, all of whom intend to ship by the end of this year. But it’s that very timing that gives Apple such a huge advantage, according to Susan Kevorkian, who follows the mobile device market for IDC. ... "

Year of the Tablet Takes Another Stab at It

Joshua Brustein, NY Times: " ... [2010] became the Year of the iPad. This year, manufacturers are promising it will be different, saying that after the success of the iPad, they have learned a lot about what consumers want in a tablet. 'We could have done this a year ago and rushed it out, but it wouldn’t have had the right features,' said Phil Osako, director of product marketing at Toshiba, which is introducing a new tablet at this year’s show, which begins Thursday in Las Vegas. ... " Other players: HP, Motorola, RIM. "Perhaps the most important feature is the ability to watch high-quality video, say industry analysts, pointing to market research showing that, above all, consumers want to use tablets for all kinds of media consumption — watching films, looking at and sharing photographs, playing games. 'Apple competitors’ first instinct was to build a cheaper device and put a cheaper processor in it,' said Sarah Rotman Epps, an analyst with Forrester Research ... 'The problem with that is that it wouldn’t have been as good for the video screens.' ... "