- By Mike Isaac
We knew Motorola’s tablet release would make waves upon its release. But with a hefty price tag and data plan strings attached, it may be more of a cannonball.
The Xoom tablet will debut on February 24 at an $800 price, according to a leaked Best Buy ad. And in a small disclaimer line underneath the picture of the tablet, the ad claims that “a minimum of one month data subscription is required” in order to unlock Wi-Fi. If the ad is accurate, that means even if you don’t want to go 3G, you’ll have to buy the 3G service for a month to unlock Wi-Fi access on the tablet.
The ad provides a list of rates for different data plans, with 1GB/month costing $20, 3GB/month at $35, 5GB/month at$50 and 10GB/month at $80. Surprise surprise, there are no unlimited data plans on Verizon’s network. But we’ve been expecting it, as Verizon has been saying for some time that it would eventually do away with its unlimited data package.
As the flagship tablet for Android’s upcoming version 3.0 (Honeycomb) OS update, Motorola’s tablet has received lots of attention from the tech community. Motorola has positioned its tablet offering as a direct challenger to the iPad’s extremely strong 75 percent hold on tablet market share, recently taunting Apple in a Xoom-focused Super Bowl commercial.
The Xoom touts an impressive spec sheet — a 1-GHz dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 10.1-inch HD display screen, 5-megapixel back facing camera with 720p HD video capture and 2-megapixel front facing camera for video chat.
But even with admirable hardware, the company may find it difficult to get the tablet off the ground if customers feel bogged down with a hefty initial price tag and strings-attached data plan options.
Requests for comment from Motorola were not returned as of this article’s publishing.
No comments:
Post a Comment