I heard about that, but what wasn't clear was what would happen in the meantime. It seems odd to me that they'd announce something in March, release it in April or something, then release the next version in September. If they didn't do that and just released it in September, why call it #3?

I understand the move to September, and the iPod event isn't going to be as sexy in the future as it once was, and it makes more sense to position for the holidays, but I just don't know what they'd do in the meantime.

Besides, my point is still the same. Just because the Xoom has better internals than the iPad 1 doesn't mean they can charge almost twice as much (or even the same) as a product that came out a year ago, especially when that product dominates the market at one price.

I was really hoping for the Android tablets to come out and be at least $50 cheaper than the iPad. At the very least I just don't see how they can charge more.

I wonder if Motorola is just so used to the "real price" of cell phones (off contract) that they're pricing it at sort of an off-contract level and not even looking at the competition. If an $800 cell phone sells for $200 on contract, I could see a $1200 tablet sell for something like $500-600 on a contract. Perhaps they might come out with a two-year contract...


*edit*
Engadget is reporting that the listing is down and that the price was supposedly a place-holder. That happens often with these unreleased products. For instance, Bruno scoffed at me when I said those early reports of the AU$999 Galaxy Tab were probably off like many devices are before official release. I'm hoping the same applies to all the price rumors on the Xoom.

Regardless, I have low, low expectations for the Xoom. Motorola have not handled this well at all. It baffles me that, regardless of how [in-]effective their Superbowl ad was, they still don't have an official release date or price announced. How could they possibly do that?

This shows how dumb an idea that ad was. Particularly with how poor the message was. Everyone who understood the add already knew about the Xoom. Anyone who didn't know about it already, even if they understood the ad, has already forgotten about the product because Motorola didn't even have their friggin' official Xoom site up at the time the ad ran! How f***ing stupid do you have to be to not put up a website for the product you just spent $3 million advertising!

Sorry, I'm getting on a rant here I'm getting pissed off because we're talking about a product I'm actively looking to purchase, but these companies keep screwing it up in at least one major way...