Telstra and Motorola today confirmed long-held speculation that the manufacturer’s Xoom tablet would launch on the telco’s Next G network, with May timing but no pricing revealed at this point.
In the last few weeks both Telstra and Motorola had declined to comment on reports that the telco would release the Xoom in mid-May.
The tablet is one of the first devices to run Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), which has been designed for the tablet form factor. It is supported by a 1GHz processor, 32GB of memory and 1GB of RAM. It sports a 10.1 inch, 1280×800 widescreen display, a 5 megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2 megapixel front-facing camera. Built from anodized aluminum, the Xoom weighs 730 grams. With respect to the Xoom’s battery life, Motorola promises up to 10 hours of video playback, 9 hours web browsing on 3G mobile broadband and a 3.5 hour recharging time.
Telstra mobility products executive director Warwick Bray said the launch of the Xoom had good timing, as he believed more and more Australians were embracing the Android platform. He said consumers would be pleased by the flexibility to create and share content while on the go. “Motorola Xoom arrives at a time when Australians are embracing both mobile tablets and devices powered by Android in record numbers,” he said.
Telstra, Optus and Vodafone have been selling the 7″ version of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab tablet since it launched in late 2010, and all three also sell 3G connectivity options for Apple’s iPad tablet, although they don’t sell the device directly. In addition, both Telstra and Optus sell their own self-branded tablets, manufactured respectively by Chinese vendors Huawei and ZTE.
However, only VHA (which operates the Vodafone and ‘3’ brands) has so far launched one of the next-generation of tablets in Australia based on Honeycomb — the Galaxy Tab 10.1v, which costs customers $729 outright and goes on sale this month.
Internationally, the Galaxy Tab and the Motorola Xoom, alongside HTC’s Flyer tablet and Research in Motion’s PlayBook device (which is not based on the Android platform) have attracted high degrees of interest, as they are seen as the chief competitors to Apple’s iPad, which has achieved strong sales figures internationally and currently dominates the Australian market for tablets.
Image credit: Motorola
Can’t wait to see how much Telstra charge for this. Not because I’m going to buy one, but because I know it will be ridiculously expensive and therefore probably sell poorly, just as it has in the States when compared to the iPad2. Apparently that has a lot to do with poor marketing compared to Apple though (going by an Engadget podcast they were comparing the launch of the tablets and Apple killed Motorola in that regard).
Don’t get me wrong, its a beast of a tablet, the first REAL Android tablet, and it has pretty much everything I’m looking for. I also hope it’s the beginning of a lot of Honeycomb tablets coming out in Australia. There’s just no way the Xoom is going to fall into my budget range. If it was $600 I would buy it in a heartbeat.
The wifi model is around $600 from Amazon. So I am expecting this from Telstra to not be any where near $600
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