Motorola’s Xoom is fast becoming a retailing slug. The slowness to catch-on with consumers (the Xoom sold only a fifth as many units during its first week compared to Apple) may not be totally the fault of the Android-based tablet, but partly retailers. A Friday report suggests big box tech giants and others are lumping the Xoom into the me-too iPad alternative category.
Best Buy, for instance, tells consumers they offer tablets, showing an iPad, then a Xoom under the generic “Tablet” label. At some Verizon Wireless stores, the iPad and iPad 2 are highlighted, with Samsung the obvious alternative. Meanwhile, the $599 Xoom is beside the $199 Samsung Galaxy Tab.
A sign of the disparity arrived Friday morning as reports suggested Apple may black-list Best Buy due to the retailer holding back selling every iPad in stock. Apparently, there is no equivalent concern the retailer will have customers demanding more Xooms.
In more bad news for the first product to be powered by Google’s tablet-centric ‘Honeycomb’ Android 3.0 OS, RIM’s PlayBook is due out later in April.
[CNET]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
14 responses to “Report: Retailers Betting Against Moto’s Xoom Tablet”
It’s not really up to the retailers to market the products, it’s up the the manufacturer. Retail stores are going to spotlight the hot merchandise and only showcase the other when they are stuck with lots of inventory or have been given financial incentives by the manufacturer to push their product.
And Apple has adverts which are memorable, unlike other tablet makers… although, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a television advert for a tablet other than the iPad… strange.
http://slicedapple-raj.blogspo…
Sort of talking about the exact subject. How Apple Competitors place them in their ads when they actually do make them. Its like free advertising for Apple.
Excuses excuses… Xoom isn’t selling because, well, it blows and even non-techie customers know it.
The truth sometimes is as easy as that.
There is no one single reason I know that most people would buy a XOOM over and iPad2 , why pay money into something that is more likely to have no support within a year
if you buy a Xoom what dedicated apps are there,the Android market store does not seem as good as Apples app store,the ipad2 has some good dedicated apps,that’s the problem I see with Android tablets I have not seen any apps that have the wow factor, but look at Amplitube and Korg iMS-20 on the ipad2 on youtube..
“Xoom” makes me think of the long-dead web hosting company, not a cool new gadget. What the hell was Motorola thinking?!