Once the last great hope of device manufacturers looking to topple the iPad colossus with a tablet of their own, the Motorola Xoom — the first tablet running Android 3.0 Honeycomb — has been a bust, largely thanks to the simultaneous launch of the iPad 2. It is estimated that Motorola has sold less than 100,000 Xooms since the tablet was launched in February, compared to a million first-month sales of the first-gen iPad (and much higher if unreported unit sales of the iPad 2).
Now, manufacturers preparing their own Honeycomb tablets are bracing for their own failures, with at least two upcoming tablets postponing their launch dates as their faith in Honeycomb as a viable platform upon which to mount a true iPad killer wanes.
According to Digitimes, because Google has been “unable to offer sufficient support” for Android 3.0 with its partners, Asus will be delaying the launch of their upcoming Eee Pad Transformer tablet by up to a month, from an original April 15th launch.
HTC has also followed suit, postponing volume production of its upcoming Honeycomb-based Flyer tablet, which is due to launch in the second quarter of this year.
According to Digitimes, the main sources of fear for Android tablet makers right now include “brand image, pricing, insufficient applications and the unstable performance of Android 3.0.”
In other words, manufacturers fear that Honeycomb lacks literally everything that makes the iPad so special. Is Honeycomb dead in the water as a tablet OS? If so, given the Playbook’s abysmal reviews, that leaves only one strong contender for challenging the iPad’s domination of the tablet market: HP’s webOS 3.0 based TouchPad, due out later this year.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
75 responses to “Digitimes: Meager Xoom Sales Shake Tablet Makers’ Faith in Honeycomb”
why am i not surprised? Somehow I knew that the Xoom wouldn’t do so well. Google needs to revamp its efforts.
I was telling the people in my office that the only non-Apple credible user experience was the WebOS-based TouchPad, but did they believe me? Nooooo…..
Crazy fandroids.
Since Eric Schmidt wasn’t able to steal the iPad ideas like he did with the iPhone the honeycomb became a dud! haha back to the drawing board it is!
Not being able to keep up with iOS is not a surprise. If you look at it closely, the whole business model does not make sense. Developing sophisticated software and handing it out for free sounds stupid. Specially when you have to pay high end developers, market the OS and pay lawyers to fend off so many intellectual property lawsuits. And all of this with dubious benefits.
The iPhone was practically Google´s property for marketing ads. With most of the basic Apps by Google already in the system, I never understood the need to alienate Apple. They will dread the day when Apple decides to change the search engine if it comes to that.
If there is a higher cause, or Google´s ideals are so pure that they just have to give away their investor´s money, then forget what I just said.
It is all about price point and usability… iPad hit a wide range of price points when it was released. I bet Apple is selling a lot more 16g wifi only iPads than any other iPad. Moto should of released a 7 inch Wifi only tablet when Android 3 supported the hardware first… Then introduced higher end models.
I was waiting for a sound wifi only Android tablet for around $400, when I was ready to buy one Android 3.0 came out. Now I am waiting for a sound wifi only Android 3 tablet with GPS for around $400… I guess I will have to wait a little while longer.
Or could they be waiting for some new features, music store etc that could increase desirability rather than go the ‘its coming in the next update pothole’
Not surprising. The iPad is just so dominant due to: superior technology, product features, App Store, iTunes familiarity, Apple brand cache…. etc. This market is going to be so BRUAL for anyone else to penetrate. Perhaps we made the right decision to stay in the iPad Repair business (and iPhone repair business)! Thanks for the update CoM!
Josh
http://www.repairzoom.com
OK, well and good that the iPads dominate their markets. However an actual viable competitor is not a bad thing.I wish someone would get their act together and make a tablet that could compete with the iPads. Then we’d start to see some real innovation in the tablet world. Otherwise Apple is just as likely to rest on it’s laurels.
I was talking about Brand Image for Motorola Xoom as well. They came out with the mentality that we are number two. People don’t want to be associated with the second best product and if there is only one thing you happen to do better. I wrote on the subject in my blog as well. (why the xoom is failing)
http://slicedapple-raj.blogspo…
You nailed it. The pundits always wonder why Apple tries to keep their products a secret. With all the dishonest companies around that are always trying to copycat Apple they’d have to keep a product secretive as long as possible. Eric the Evil back-stabbed Steve Jobs and the computer industry is praising Google for doing it. Now Android is supposedly the greatest thing since sliced bread with Wall Street yukking it up about Android’s mobile takeover.
I hope the iPad 2 crushes the life out of Android Honeycomb by selling tens of millions of units and then having the “halo effect” of users wanting to toss their crappy Android smartphones away and buy iPhones. Apple and Foxconn need to quickly ramp up iPad 2 production as high as possible and leave Honeycomb tablets gasping for air.
I told you so!
I think Google should make a Nexus Tab and set the standard for other manufacturers to adhere to. They did it with the Nexus One and Nexus S, so why not do it with the tablet?
Not a tablet guy myself, iPad or otherwise, but in a year from now the only person on the planet that can lay claim to making any headway against the iPad juggernaut with the Xoom, or any of the others, is the reverse-flow guy from the Superbowl ad who managed to at least ‘tap’ into at least one orifice of the favourable Apple demographic.
And that’s scripted fiction. Lol.
Am I the only one thinking Google needs to just keep doing what they do best, search engines stuff?
Who can use something like this Uggh,
My iPad 2 rocks !
Like how year after year they rested on their iPod dominance and didn’t innovate? Like that, right? Apple needs no competition to come up with the best.
I suspect that Digitimes is wrong. They aren’t delaying out of fear or a reconsideration of honeycomb. But rather they realized that using ‘supports Flash’ and ‘with 4g’ as key points is no good if the items aren’t supporting it when you open the box. So they are waiting to release a full product. Which is a very smart move
Apple never just rests on it’s laurels. Nor do they do anything because the other boys do.
But I agree that it would be nice to see another tablet make it at least a month out of the gate. So then the ipad can be ‘the best’ and not just ‘the only’
Isn’t it weird that the failed competition for the iPod was called Zune and it disappeared and now the failing competition to the iPad is called a Xoom? Phonetically, they sound pretty similar to me… Will they share the same fate?
‘Eee’ sounds like the scream emitted by people opening the box to find the cheap plastic garbage they just threw away good money on.
Hmm… Death on arrival?
What point are you trying to make other than sarcasm? This post is ??? what are you contributing?
Look into the interesting things happening around iPad2 and Apple mainstream. First is the announcement of Final Cut Pro for $299 and apps for iPad2 via Adobe and Thunderbolt cable interfacing. Also Adobe release Streaming via Apples AirStream technology (Flash is on the way out). Even Playbook with Flash 10.2 only does the ads well … the rest is choppy and awkward. Then couple a massive effort to implement cloud computing, file backup and synch and share. Even MS is now coordinating Exchange services with Office for Mac with Office for PC and enterprise. Look at the adoption of iPad2 into business, schools, medical, and the list goes on and on. It is an essential infrastructure that is growing and demanding, not just an other tablet.
The basic Xoom cost more than the basic Wi-Fi iPad2 … now you add more cost with CDMA or GSM (both with GPS) and you want them to cut the price $100. Business 101 isn’t market share %, it is profitability. Acer found that out. Buy a Nook and jail break it…not recommended but that might fit into your wait and see budget.
Apple is building a fabulous top end movie editing and production scheme with Adobe, Thunderbolt high speed data transfer, massive cloud storage and retrieval and fabulous app stores, ibook stores, and mac stores. Then it would seem they are taking on Netflix and who knows whats next. iPad2 is finding its way in to enterprise, SMB, schools, medical, etc. It is all coming together into a huge infrastructure that is truely beneficial and profitable.
Google is not a hardware manufacturer … their business is making money from Ads … they are better at that than anyone. Phones is a great business for them with the carriers doing all the marketing. But Tablets is a whole different animal… it is not dependent on the telecommunication carriers the same way phones are. Think bigger
It has nothing to do with Honeycomb, the tablet is great. Its the bad marketing and the fact that you go into Best Buy and have to “try hard” to actually find one on display. When you do, its located in the back by the Windows Laptops. How about they invest some money in the displays, better PR, etc. This is why it isn’t selling, even though its a great machine.
But every day they have to delay is a very dumb move, especially since they’ve already delayed any viable competitor to the iPad for over a year now.
What’s amazing is that the iPad was not a big surprise like the original iPhone. Everyone knew what the iPad would be like because of the iPhone. Yet they still can’t come up with an slate with the combination of size, battery life, price and fluid UI.
The non-iPad tablets I’ve seen have been up near the front, near the phones in Best Buy stores.
The iPads are near the back with the other Apple products.
“Motorola has sold less than 100,000 Xooms.” Fewer than.
I love. Y Xoom! I am a heavy Tech user and use it for work as much as personal use. In fact I read this crap blog and replying to it from said Xoom! Try it for a few days before you knock it.
Hmmmm, XOOM sounds a lot like ZUNE…
I tried the Xoom at bestbuy, it is good but nowhere near the iPad 2. No apps to test, the UI is messy. I was going to buy the Xoom because i watch lots of Korean drama on megavideo using flash, try that , it doesnt work, what a shame. Making fun Apple so much, even comimg out with the website in flash then its Xoom cant even view it. What a freaking beta product with a beta software. Copycat will always behind Apple
I think I will probably get an iPad 2, the Honeycomb tablets are all too techy for a start, boasting about all their features, whilst Apple simply tells you what the average, everyday person needs to know about the iPad 2. However, the iPhone is ridiculously high priced in the UK. It’s £510 for the iPhone 4, and £428 for the 3GS! I can’t see how the iPad can be cheaper than a phone. So unfortunately myself and many others are still using Android for phones, but really, we all want an iPhone. Lower your prices please, Apple?
Well Android is “the greatest thing since sliced bread” in some ways, primarily for phone manufacturers who can now produce smartphones en masse for cheap. If you could get the latest iPhone from any cell provider for $100-$200, you’d see Android’s market share start to drop.
I love android for a lot of things, but where I think the XOOM falls short is that the tablet is made for media consumption—games, movies, internet…Content, content, content. Whereas a mobile device doesn’t rely solely on mass amounts of content to actually be functional, this seems to be the primary purpose of tablets. Until Android has two things: streaming video (from Amazon or other sources), and a more robust app market, I’m not surprised that people keep turning to the iPad.
I disagree with Ken Hughes, however, on the point that the iPhone would dominate the market if it were available anywhere for 100-200 dollars—remember the Sneetches. As soon as everyone has an iPhone, it will be the last thing anyone wants, because deep down, people just want to be special.
I love android for a lot of things, but where I think the XOOM falls short is that the tablet is made for media consumption—games, movies, internet…Content, content, content. Whereas a mobile device doesn’t rely solely on mass amounts of content to actually be functional, this seems to be the primary purpose of tablets. Until Android has two things: streaming video (from Amazon or other sources), and a more robust app market, I’m not surprised that people keep turning to the iPad.
I disagree with Ken Hughes, however, on the point that the iPhone would dominate the market if it were available anywhere for 100-200 dollars—remember the Sneetches. As soon as everyone has an iPhone, it will be the last thing anyone wants, because deep down, people just want to be special.
I laughed too when read the name “Eee”, Asus should fire whoever gave that name. In my country “Eee” means “pup” or “taking dump” LOL
stfu tool