The WiFi Xoom, now you see it, now you don't

[theeedude]

Tablets are going to be an easier market for Android to take from iOS than phones.
Phones are very personal devices and also fashion accessories that people are seen with outside. Both of those play into Apple's strengths of UI, industrial design, and branding a lot more than tablets, which are media consumption and light productivity devices largely used at home. Tablets play more into Google's strengths in cloud based computing, good web browser with Flash support, online document editing, media distribution (youtube), calendar, picasa, etc. Essentially Google already has in the cloud most of the pieces that go into a tablet experience. Also, they finally got a clue about importance of UI design and hired the WebOS GUI designer, and he's already making a big impact with Honeycomb in the short time he was there, so I think over the longer term, Android UI is going to be one of the better ones on the market.

 

[Puddle Jumper]

Yup, they are. They always seem to get a 24 month drop on everyone. It's insane.

Last time I checked the Xoom was released within a year of the original iPad and every objective review I've seen considers it to be the superior device.

 

[HeXen]

Phones are very personal devices and also fashion accessories that people are seen with outside.

actually i saw a kid today carrying what appeared to be a generic ipad. same size, just looked different, probably one of those china ones, had his HP's on, just beeboppin along lol. I've seen plenty of people carrying around laptops like their a fashion thing, so ya never know, theres room for both but i see it as more of an in home convenience than anything.

 

[Monster_Munch]

£450 in the UK is a pretty good price, I think the cheapest ipad is £439 and only has half the storage space. If you were buying a high end tablet right now it would definitely be the Xoom. But like Anand said in his review, only an idiot would do that before hearing apple's ipad 2 announcement.

 

[Pliablemoose]

There's a 21% VAT (value added tax) on electronics in the UK IIRC, so it would retail for $580 here.