Motorola’s Xoom tablet, which hit the market Thursday, may soon need all the help it can get to compete with Apple’s fast-selling iPad as the second generation of the iPad arrives. The ability to use Verizon Wireless’ long term evolution 4G network could be an advantage.
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Verizon, the Xoom’s exclusive carrier, announced Friday that the 10.1-inch tablet with a one-gigahertz dual-core processor — the first to run Google’s tablet-optimized Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system — will be upgradeable to LTE connectivity, enabling download speeds of five to 12 megabits per second. That’s enough, the carrier claims, to download a song in four seconds or watch a movie with no buffering.
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The Catch
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But getting access won’t be as easy as waiting for an over-the-air update. It will require a hardware change that can only be performed by Motorola, with a six-business-day wait plus shipping time. And users will have to back up and remove any confidential data before sending the Xoom in.
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That nuisance could be a setback for average-user adoption, along with the $799 initial price tag. A $600 Wi-Fi-only Xoom is reportedly in the works, and Verizon sells the current Xoom for $599 with a two-year data contract.
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The Motorola Xoom is clearly positioned as a device for prosumers and business professionals, said mobile-devices analyst Jeff Orr of ABI Research. Prosumers are customers who straddle the professional and consumer markets, such as small-business owners.
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One can argue that [the Xoom’s] sole tie-up with Verizon Wireless is limiting — U.S. only; not on every carrier; no Wi-Fi-only model, etc., but [Motorola and Verizon] have shown success with their Droid smartphones.
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Whether there is a significant demand in the budding tablet market for a mobile Internet device that essentially replaces or augments what smartphones and laptops already do remains to be seen, Orr said. The good…