
Motorola Xoom Looking Like Epic Flop - lotusleaf1987
http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/05/02/motorola-xoom-looking-like-epic-flop/
======
blocke
Google has done everything it can to hamstring this launch. The software
sucks. Buggy, Crashy, Beta quality. The emulator's performance is so bad it's
unusable. The tablet section of the market is empty of real tablet apps. The
Android Market can't even handle reorienting itself.

The Android team doesn't seem to give a shit. Ask anyone who has tried to
support Android is an Enterprise how bad the Exchange, VPN and 802.1x stacks
have been since day one. Business as usual. Their public issue tracker is
obviously intended as a space for frustrated users [1] to shout into a
bottomless pit of who gives a shit.

I used to be a major Android fan but screw this. If only WebOS was open
source...

[1] - Edited to substitute users for customers. Real users are not Google's
customers. And the experience shows.

~~~
hinathan
That's not Google doing 'everything it can to hamstring' — That's Motorola
shipping a product based on an OS that's obviously not ready. Motorola's
fault.

~~~
blocke
"That's not Google doing 'everything it can to hamstring' — That's Motorola
shipping a product based on an OS that's obviously not ready. Motorola's
fault."

Google controls Android 3.0 completely. They very intentionally did not make a
source release. Google entered the relationship with Motorola and it damn well
had control over who was going to ship a 3.0 device. They knew what they were
doing. They HAD to beat the iPad 2 release date at all costs.

So now all we have is a buggy as hell 3.0 OS with no source release and we're
still waiting for them to fix stuff. I hope the early release to beat the iPad
furthered some other business goal because it didn't further Android as a
great Tablet OS.

The flaws I've seen in the device are clear OS and Software issues. So unless
your point of view is that it's up to other people to fix Google's fuckups...
eh...

~~~
cmsj
The box says Motorola. That means they signed off shipping it. Even if any
problems with it can be placed firmly at Google's door, it still says Motorola
on the box. I think that was the previous commenter's point.

~~~
foobarbazetc
The box says Motorola AND Google.

The device has both logos on the back, and they're the same size.

~~~
cmsj
did Google order manufacturing of the device? did Google order printing of the
manuals and the box? did Google stack the boxed up devices onto palettes and
ship them out to shops? Is it called the Google Xoom? No no no no. All of the
above are Motorola, and more. It's a Motorola product which uses hardware and
software components from probably dozens of suppliers. One of those suppliers
is Google. They may have supplied a shitty component, but Motorola shipped the
device instead of saying "this isn't ready, don't ship it".

How are you actually arguing with this point? Is it just because this is the
internet and fingertips are a renewable resource?

------
foobarbazetc
I recently bought a Xoom (since the Android Honeycomb emulator is _unusable_
), and it's a laughably poor product from the unboxing experience all the way
to the _horrible_ UI that is Honeycomb (even worse than standard phone
Android, and that's laughable UI -- where's the HIG, Google?).

Honeycomb is like taking the worst Linux WM you can find and sticking it onto
a tablet with no thought for how a tablet should work. This is going to appeal
to some Android fans, but that's about it.

Everything on this device is horrible. The device feels chunky and heavy, the
screen looks dithered (you can see individual pixels) and unevenly lit, and
you can see UI element flicker into place. And there are about 2 or 3 tablet
specific apps that are actually tablet apps in the Market (Angry Birds, and
some other poor quality Android games). ClockOS even lives on, with a
dedicated clock on the home screen, and the bottom right corner, and there's
even a 'Clock' app. Fantastic.

Oh, it also doesn't charge via USB. WTF?

Anyway, it has one thing going for it: it has Angry Birds and it works more or
less like the iPad version of Angry Birds. That's about it.

~~~
guelo
I own a Xoom, and while I agree it is nowhere near the iPad experience, the
device is not THAT bad, your comment is way too harsh. There are 64 tablet
specific apps. And you are lying about seeing individual pixels, it has a
higher pixel density than the iPad, on par with an iPhone 3G.

~~~
foobarbazetc
I'm not lying. I can see the dithering and have terrible eyesight.

The pixel density may be higher than the iPad, but the screen quality is
_nowhere near it_.

And the device is that bad. What's with the system tray? And the Windows Vista
style app switcher? It's like we've gone back in time to when Windows 95 was
cool (and Honeycomb has a UI that is less consistent than Windows 95), except
with tappable UI widgets.

Maybe 4.0 will fix it all (ala how 2.0 brought Android into the 'usable'
category), but this is not a tablet for anyone but nerds.

'64 tablet specific apps' is being generous. Maybe the people developing these
apps upped targetSdk and stuck in a poorly-recreated-fragment-API-using-thing-
aka-UISplitViewController widget, but that's pretty much it.

The rest are games that are available on iPad.

------
cmsj
(Disclaimer: I own a whole stack of Apple kit, including an iPad, and some
AAPL).

I've not played with a Xoom, but it keeps striking me that all of the people
launching Android tablets are totally the wrong people to be doing it. Apple
has (at least) the following things going for it:

1) It gets great deals on components and manufacturing 2) It maintains very
consistent retail pricing 3) It does a lot of retail itself 4) It gets 30% off
the top of all app purchases on the device 5) It gets ?% off the top of all
music/movie purchases on the device

Points 1-3 are good for initial profit margins. It means they're making decent
money on every iPad sold. Points 4 and 5 are good for ARPU (average revenue
per user) - it means you're continuing to make money from every device sale,
long into the future.

Now look at the Xoom or the Galaxy Tab or any other android tablet currently
available or announced and think very hard about which of the above points
apply. I think you'd struggle to apply anything other than point 1 and even
that probably only applies to Samsung. Most of the vendors do small
manufacturing runs, sell them wholesale to retailers and get no money from end
users until it's time for new hardware. The only exception to this I can think
of would be revenue sharing deals from the mobile networks on the 3G models. I
don't know what kind of deals these would be, but my guess is that the
networks would demand pretty cheap unit prices on the hardware.

So who could do better? The obvious answer is Amazon, they could at least get
points 3, 4 and 5 (and 3 strongly suggests they'd also get point 2) and what
are they doing? Running an Android app store right now. If they can make a
good tablet (and the Kindle hardware suggests they should be able to), they
could really make a splash with it, and that would help them improve on point
1. Sony might be able to, in that they could arrange point 5 and potentially 1
and 2, but my general view on Sony's ability to execute in the 'digital
lifestyle' arena is very very negative ;)

Alternatively perhaps Samsung's desire to copy Apple's hardware will translate
into a desire to copy their services. If they could get deals on content then
they could get points 4 and 5 and differentiate themselves from the Android
crowd.

That's my take on part of the tablet world. I also think Android badly needs
some really slick tablet apps - on a par with iMovie and GarageBand, both of
which are stunningly good.

~~~
code_duck
Those are the reasons why Apple is well situated in the market, and can offer
low prices and still make great margins.

The reasons that their products are successful beyond that are even more
important, IMO. Unlike Motorola, Samsung, Google, Nokia, and so many other
companies in this space, Apple has been working very hard on designing
interfaces for applications and personal computer operating systems for a very
long time. When you put Apple with their experience with OS X and Mac software
up against Motorola, even with Google's help, it's clear who has the
advantage.

There's not really another company with Apple's sort of experience out there,
other than Microsoft. The problem is their mobile strategy is a mess still,
and they don't seem the same quality of vision that Apple does.

~~~
cmsj
I don't disagree with you at all. The software is a huge part of Apple's
success, but I was being generous and assuming Android is as good. Even with
ideal hardware specs and software quality, Android tablets would still be
worse business than iPad.

~~~
code_duck
Android _is_ good, but the non-Google (Motorola) software that came with my
phone is clearly not as well designed as the Google stuff, and definitely not
as good as the Apple software that comes with iPhones - mail clients being a
good example.

------
m0nastic
I'm not so sure that there's any useful conclusions to draw from this article
(even assuming that the numbers they cite are correct).

If the Xoom turns out to be unsuccessful, there's no shortage of possible
explanations as to why that was the case. At this point, I think we need to
either have a successful non-iPad tablet, or a longer period without a
successful non-iPad to make any kind of useful analysis.

If another Android tablet launches and is successful, than that may tell us
something about what Motorola did wrong here. If the Playbook becomes
successful, that might also tell us something, but again, these would be
things specific to Motorola's product.

The only meaningful conclusion that this seems to suggest is that just
launching a tablet doesn't guarantee success (which shouldn't be a surprise,
as that's been the status quo for the past decade at least).

~~~
daniel_solano
Slowly but surely, there are new Honeycomb tablets being shipped. In the US,
this past week has seen the release of two new tablets: the Acer Iconia A500
and the Asus EEE Pad Transformer. Both of these tablets have functioning SD
card slots, showing that the lack of a working slot is Motorola's fault, not
Google's. In addition, these have some neat features that, as I understand it,
the iPad does not support, such as USB host mode (allowing use of a USB thumb
drive, external HD, keyboard or mouse). Both of these devices also sport
prices lower than the Xoom.

I am particularly intrigued by the Asus device, as it has a keyboard accessory
that effectively turns the tablet into a netbook. For me, this type of
versatility can have real value. Unfortunately, Asus has not done a very good
job of supplying enough devices to meet the demand.

~~~
georgemcbay
I've got the ASUS Transformer, I was one of the lucky few who got an order in
around midnight of the launch date (bought mine on BestBuy.com). The device is
really quite fantastic, far better than the Xoom (which I've used but don't
own) and cheaper. The IPS screen is just absolutely gorgeous to look at and
really elevates it over the other Honeycomb tablets I've seen.

Unfortunately the keyboard docking station is largely vaporware here in the
USA -- reviewers got them but I don't believe a single unit has sold at retail
here. It is somewhat puzzling why the docks are even more scarce than the
tablets since the dock is a relatively straightforward piece of electronics
compared to tablet itself.

------
nkassis
I haven't seen them around, I mean I can buy a Playbook at Indigo ( a
bookstore in Canada) but good luck finding a Xoom. Plus for the price it's
hard to justify I guess for non android nerds like me.

But whatever, the Xoom is one devices, like the HTC Dream, this isn't a big
deal in the Android big picture.

~~~
cmsj
"the Android big picture" == "throw enough crap at the wall and some of it
will stick" ;)

------
tzs
If Xoom had shipped six months earlier, it could have been a killer product.
Sure, the OS would have been beta quality at best, but the hardware was killer
compared to iPad 1.

However, compared to iPad 2, it has no significant hardware advantage. Maybe
the screen aspect ratio for some people. It has no price advantage. The OS is
still beta quality. For all but the small number of people who want a tablet
without the restrictions of the Apple Store and who aren't willing to
jailbreak an iPad 2, there is simply no reason to buy a Xoom.

Unless Motorola are idiots, they HAD to have predicted that there would be an
iPad 2 and that it would be announced about a year after iPad 1. So unless the
plan was for the Xoom to come out long before that and the schedule slipped, I
don't understand what their plan was.

~~~
zwily
So admitting that the OS is beta quality even now, you really think it would
have been a killer product 6 months ago?

------
code_duck
While the Xoom looks pretty neat to me, I've heard of some people having
problems with their XOOMs and I'm not surprised. My Moto Droid 2 phone
experience has been rather shocking, quality wise. Even when the hardware
seems to be working 100%, I could fill a page with all the little-to-medium
software glitches I deal with daily.

~~~
moultano
I have one and love it. My only issues with it are that some apps don't manage
memory for screen rotations well, so crash when trying to allocate another
buffer the size of the screen when you rotate it (Aldiko in particular). Most
apps work fantastically though, and the preinstalled ones are all beautiful.
Google Books in particular.

~~~
code_duck
I _like_ it, and I wanted to like it, but I've had so many problems. I went
through several units that I returned to Verizon. Currently, now that I have
what seems to be a fully functional unit, my two main issues are instability
of the hotspot (which I've seen zillions of people complain about on Droid Xs,
too) and poor/inconsistent camera image quality.

------
pavlov
Hmm. This article claims 25-125,000 Xoom units sold. Last week Motorola said
that they shipped 250,000 units in the first quarter [0].

I'm aware of the difference between "shipped" and "sold", but the figures in
the Forbes article should be taken with a grain of salt.

[0] <http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2384615,00.asp>

~~~
lotusleaf1987
They're different verbs with different implications, I think Forbes is being
pretty clear. Xoom may have shipped 250,000, but only 125k were actually sold.
The other half are sitting on the shelves somewhere, which means inventory is
high--a bad sign, which usually leads to price-cuts to clear space.

------
razzmataz
There's probably good reason. It was way too expensive, for one thing. I
haven't seen any of these tablets hit the sweet spot of pricing that a few
surveys revealed a while back.

------
npalli
Bogus numbers, the report is based on an analyst who predicted between 25,000
to 120,000 sales. The company reported 250,000 shipped in their earnings. Not
an iPad killer for sure but not as dire as reported either. Most importantly,
the wi-fi version had been on sale starting only March 27th. The initial sales
were predominantly for the overpriced wifi/3G model.

~~~
wriq
Shipped ≠ Sales

~~~
npalli
Yes, but motorola doesn't own any retail stores unlike Apple. So they don't
have visibility into sales until a couple of months. Unless you are looking at
a very high return rate, it is a good proxy for sales.

~~~
shaggyfrog
You forgot the existence of a very high sitting-on-the-shelf rate.

You can ship all the units you want, but unless people are taking them home,
the number is definitely not a good proxy for sales.

~~~
npalli
Well sure, I mean there is always the possibility that there is channel
stuffing. But why take the pessimistic view that all the shipped tablets are
on the shelf when you don't have any information. Things to note --

1\. at amazon.com, the only site I have been tracking the tablets in actual
sales, the Xoom is either #1 or #2 in tablet sales over the past two months. I
mean, it is ahead of even the iPad 2 that is supposed to supply constrained.
So all the guys who stood in line and brought iPad2's so they could sell for a
markup -- finding it difficult to sell even for a $100 premium -- compared to
the flop show that is the Xoom.
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1232597011/...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1232597011/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_e_1_3_last)
(this keeps changing, so don't hold me to it).

2\. the wifi model is flying off the shelf at some of the local retailers. did
someone earlier mention out of stock situation in Canada?

3\. the wifi was introducted on Mar 26th, a couple of days before their
quarter ended

4\. more channels and price points are yet to be introduced.

~~~
halostatue
1\. More people, I think, are likely to buy an iPad from Apple.com rather than
Amazon.com, so the fact that Xoom is higher-rated than iPad there doesn't mean
much. IMO.

2\. I have yet to see one in Canada, but I'm not really looking. However, it's
certainly possible that people are always out of stock because they're only
ordering 1 - 3 of them and there's definitely people out there who will buy
things _because_ they're not from Apple.

3\. Granted.

4\. If they're having problems with the channels and price points they have
already, they're not likely to do much better outside. Motorola's built on the
mobile phone channel. Building up a channel outside of your niche is _hard_.

