14 DAY TRIAL // The Motorola XOOM tablet has garnered less than sparkling reviews upon its introduction on the market and it seems that it is, so to speak, in tune with what iSupply found after checking the price of its hardware.
End-users may remember that, during MWC 2011 (Mobile World Congress), many tablets were unleashed upon the IT market.
Most of them were powered by an ARM platform (usually Tegra 2) and used the Android 3.0 operating system, otherwise known as Honeycomb.
One of the slates that got a bit more attention that the majority is known as the Motorola XOOM, based on a dual-core ARM 1GHz chip.
Reviewers didn't find it particularly impressive, not because it didn't have good hardware and features, but because of some glitches and, most importantly, the price of $800 that was just too high, according to testers.
Now, iSuppli has published a press release in which it states that, as discovered by its investigation, the hardware of the slate costs $359.92.
That said, iSupply seems to think that the XOOM has the potential to become a very good rival for Apple's iPad 3G, which goes for $320 with 32GB storage.
“The XOOM earns its status as a true iPad competitor by virtue of the fact that it equals many of the iPad’s best features—while also making up for some the iPad’s shortcomings, such as the lack of a camera—at least until Apple begins shipping its second-generation product line,” said Wayne Lam, senior analyst, competitive analysis, at IHS.
Of course, whether Apple really does end up having to pay special mind to this challenger remains to be seen.
“With its features and functionality, the XOOM is clearly designed to go head-to-head against the iPad 3G.”
“In pursuing that design philosophy, Motorola has closely lined up the XOOM’s component costs with that of the iPad’s, especially where it counts: in the touch screen, the display and the cellular radio. Of all the ‘iPad killers’ analyzed by the IHS iSuppli teardown team, the XOOM best approximates the cost/performance standard set by Apple.”