Motorola Plans to Ship 800,000 Xoom Tablets by March
By: Arthur Cooper
Submitted: 2011-01-12 02:00:53 | Word Count: 664
After the Xoom’s success at the Consumer Electronics Show, Motorola is planning to ship around 800,000 of the tablets between February and March of this year. The tablet will come in a few different color schemes and will ship up to 1 million if the demand is there.
Other company’s plan to follow suit this year, and if everyone meets their goals every Tom, Dick and Larry is going to have a tablet. Samsung anticipates shipping around 1.5 million of its Galaxy S tablets in the fall of 2011, and Apple will ship 5 to 7 million of its iPads, although it’s unclear whether those numbers reflect the iPad or the much speculated iPad 2.
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800,000 is a fair number for an introductory tablet, but it doesn’t really seem like enough to make much of a dent in Apple’s market share, especially if anything coming out of the rumor mills is true.
iPad 2 Coming Within a Month?
The latest rumor regarding the next generation iPad comes from Digg founder Kevin Rose. He said, “I have it on good authority that Apple will be announcing the iPad 2 in the next ’3-4 weeks,’ possibly Tuesday February 1st.”
There seems to be some basis to this assumption, as Apple has blacked out vacation time for its employees for a three week period that starts at the end of this month. Although, employees have not been told what the reason for the blackout is, as is typical of Apple. Really, they can’t have every $7.50 an hour retail worker knowing the company secrets. Then what would be the point of all this hype? The rumor mill would effectively be shut down! What would the world be like then?
The most recent rumors have said the iPad will include the retina display the iPhone 4 features, as well as better speakers, a front facing camera and a flatter back to accommodate complaints that the rounded back made the device difficult to use on a flat surface.
Personally, I’d be glad to see an iPad 2, the sooner the better. I’m sick of all this speculation about a device that’s basically a giant iPhone. Apple is capable of more than this, and I want to see what else they can do. There have been rumors about new processors in their Macbook line that increase speeds by up to 800%! 800%! Why isn’t anyone buzzing about that? That’s amazing! Imagine being 800% faster at doing your work than you were yesterday! You could do over a week’s worth of work in one day!
And what about the next iPhone? Is there going to be another iPhone, or is Apple moving on to another frontier, to let companies like Motorola and Ericson reclaim the mobile market? Unlikely, but with Motorola rolling out 10 million phones this year, the potential is there. And what would this iPhone 5 have that the iPhone 4 doesn’t have? More stable video conferencing? What else? Rumor mill, you’ve failed me!
As per usual, time will tell what’s in store for these electronics giants and how consumers respond to the products they’ll offer in 2011.
