Motorola Mobility's Xoom sold somewhere between 25,000 and 120,000 units, according to Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdry. Verizon said it was happy with its Xoom sales.
Sales of any
tablet are going to look bleak, compared with Apple's iPad, which sold 4.7 million units in the recent quarter.
The outlook
for Motorola Mobility's Xoom tablet is particularly bleak, according to Global
Equities analyst Trip Chowdry. Chowdry said the first Android 3.0
"Honeycomb" tablet sold somewhere from 5 percent to 15 percent of the
500,000 to 800,000 units manufactured.
Chowdry, who
surveyed six Costco stores, five Verizon stores, five Best Buy stores and three
Staples stores, to reach his conclusions, puts Xoom sales somewhere between
25,000 and 120,000 units. Compared with the iPad's monster sales, this could be
considered a failure to compete.
Motorola,
which is in its quiet period until it announces first-quarter earnings April
28, declined to comment to eWEEK for this story. Verizon Wireless, which
released its earnings last week, took a different view.
Verizon
spokesperson Brenda Raney declined to confirm or deny Chowdry's estimates, but
told eWEEK April 26: "We are very pleased with the sales of Xoom. It
continues to be a popular item."
That doesn't
sound like the failure Chowdry is making the Xoom out to be, but positive
public relations will often prevail.
Chowdry also
declared Honeycomb, which is being deployed on more than a dozen tablets this
year, "dead on arrival." He said a survey of 150 developers indicated
that Honeycomb is incomplete, sporting an incomplete features set, incomplete
developer tools, poor user interface, unstable software and poor design.
Chowdry had declared similar findings back in March, calling
the UI complicated and confusing.
On balance,
the 10.1-inch Xoom not only performed well in tests by eWEEK, but stacked up
favorably to the iPad 2 in side-by-side comparisons that eWEEK conducted. The Xoom is fast and certainly
more graphically pleasing than the iPad 2.
The analyst
also called Google's Android Market a "disaster," with developers
unable to make money from their applications.
The Android
Market needs a lot of work, but it's hardly a disaster and is improving all of
the time. Google just added merchant sales reports to the store to show
developers their earnings in a dashboard.
Ultimately,
Chowdry said Motorola may want to rethink putting all of its eggs in Android's
basket, and to wield its 16,000 mobile-centric patents as a deterrent against
other Android smartphone rivals that seek to undercut it on price.
"Carriers
prefer to push Google Android phones from HTC, Kyocera, [and] LG over Motorola
Android Phones, as carriers make more money on the Android phones from HTC,
Kyocera, LG, etc.," Chowdry reported.
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