It would seem that after all those rumours attributing an astronomical price point to the Motorola Xoom, common sense has won out and the Honeycomb-powered tablet will indeed be relatively affordable at launch. A product page from UK retailer PC World (which has subsequently been yanked) has revealed the price for the 32GB, Wifi-only version of the tablet as £450 ($730), which is remarkably only £10 more than the current asking price for Apple’s entry-level iPad, and a full £60 less than the equivalent, 32GB iPad.
Hopefully this will put to bed the worrisome speculation that the newest round of Android tablets, sporting Google’s tablet-centric Honeycomb (version 3.0 of the open-source OS, for those keeping score at home), would be handicapped out of the gate by uncompetitive pricing.
Meanwhile in Germany, the 3G-equipped version of the Xoom has been priced up at €700 by T-Mobile (who have also scored a three-month exclusive for the new device), which is exactly the same price as the equivalent iPad. Pure coincidence, we’re sure.
Motorola’s margins have got to be quite slim on this new 10″ device – quality touchscreens of that size don’t come cheap, and the Xoom sports more hardware than the iPad, rocking a couple of cameras and stereo speakers. However this aggressive pricing is clearly a sign that they’re in this game to win – the iPad may have ruled the first year of the tablet revolution, but it looks as though Motorola is looking to change that.
Gentlemen, it looks like we have a fight.
Via Engadget
