So what is the exact tally for the iPad-killing, Honeycomb flagship tablet Xoom? Is it 250,000 as claimed by the company or is it
25,000 as calculated by an analyst? First off, it is like comparing oranges and apples, since Motorola is talking about tablets shipped and not sold, but still as the tablet king iPad has shown that truly successful devices have their shipped and sold numbers totally synchronized, that is the product remains sold out most of the time. Even if we consider that Motorola sold all the tablets it shipped out, it still is not the performance expected from a flagship product. But I guess this point has already been proved.
Earlier, Deutsche Bank had deduced that the company had sold 100,000 units, which seems like a credible number now. As far as the latest analysis of 25,000 units is concerned, the analyst actually gave a pretty wide range where the upper end of his estimate stood at 120,000 units. Given the fact that the analyst took liberty of writing a report with such wide margin figures, I am going to take his analysis with a couple of pinches of salt.
Trip Chowdhry, the analyst, not only trashed the tablet but the software too, which he referred to as "poor software quality". He also mentioned, "Google Honeycomb is suffering from frequent application freezes and crashes." He also claimed that his interaction with Xoom owner have made him to conclude that Honeycomb UI is "extremely complicated and confusing, and does not come naturally, you really have to work on it,”
However, Android is still not that wounded as Motorola is. So far, the market is preparing its spears for Motorola only and Honeycomb has so far been spared. Lately, there had been quite a few Honeycomb tablets dropping in the market like the ones from Asus. The success or failure of these tablets will collectively determine the future of Honeycomb. And Motorola is looking frail now. The company has managed to contain its operating losses but is still burdened by them. Its other high profile launch Atrix has also not gained the expected traction.
Motorola may take a few steps to correct the wrongs it has already committed. Please make it 4G ready, since that was the USP of the tablet and yes, lowering the price a bit wouldn't hurt either, since Asus has already launched Honeycomb tablet with sub-$500 price tag. Else, you may go and cry on Research in Motion's shoulder, which is on the verge of committing the blunder of equal proportion with its PlayBook.
One thought on “Motorola Claims Shipping Out 250,000 Xoom; Analyst Says Only 25,000 Sold”
I’d say it’s more than 25k. I personally know at least 10 people with it. Yeah that’s not a lot but with billions of people in the world it has to be more. I can’t attest for it’s userablitity seeing as I don’t own one. I have played with it in the store and I like what I saw and to me it wasn’t that complicated, though I could see how someone could get confused. I own the iPad 2 and like it a lot but I’m still going to get one of the honeycomb tablets this year, just haven’t decided. I hope honeycomb starts selling more because I like competition and as far as Apple goes I’d love for it to see some n