Motorola Xoom Pricing Confounds Consumers, Analysts
Excerpt:
For the purpose of this report, let's take what we assume is the subsidized Xoom price point at $799 instead of the $1,199 price point, which is extremely unlikely to be the popular purchase plan.
At prices like these, Motorola and its partners may push consumers to Apple's iPad, which offers WiFi-only and WiFi+3G models. Moreover, the iPad 2 is coming out soon, which should have features, such as dual cameras, to make it more competitive with the Xoom.
One reader wrote:
"Was planning on buying a Xoom but will now wait for the ipad 2. Don't like having to donate $50 to Verizon and having to pay a higher price than the expected ipad 2. If the ipad 2 comes out with lower pricing as expected motorola will have to lower theirs as well and I'm not going to get stuck paying more just to buy it upon first release."
Another noted: "I also was exited about the Xoom, but a wifi only version. I don't need cellular for it. I guess I will wait for the ipad 2 as well. I'll never buy a computer that REQUIRES are data plan. That is just ridiculous."
Tech analysts agree the strategy is strange. Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi told Eweek: "The Xoom will need a hefty subsidy for consumers to pick it up as 800 dollars is quite a bit to pay."
IDC analyst Susan Kevorkian said there isn't a good reason for consumers to pay $800 for a Motorola tablet, when they could pay only $29 more for a 64GB iPad with 3G, or less for other iPad models.
"In a market where iPad sets a high standard for quality and technology integration, any would-be media tablet competitor that wants to gain share needs to price a device competitively against iPad and $800 for Xoom isn't competitive," Kevorkian added.
Enderle Group analyst Rob Enderle attributed the high-price for the 10-inch Xoom to the fact that Apple tied up the supply for 10-inch touch displays (iPad uses 9.7 inch display, technically), which means that other tablet makers pay a huge premium for them and pass the cost on to consumers.
"Maintaining a premium price against Apple is almost impossible to do with an Android-based product given that most underprice their Apple counterparts at volume," Enderle said. "This is one of the reasons I think the iPad remains untouchable for most of this year -- they have a huge price advantage until display production ramps up."
More: eweek.com
None the less, the resident Android will be the first to pay at least $799.99 for this POS. (VBG) |
