Motorola Xoom

» see motorola.com/xoom as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the eulogy ~

the motorola xoom was announced at CES 2011 and shipped a month later, on 24 february 2011, as a US-only verizon exclusive. it was google's picked-partner device for the launch of android 3.0 honeycomb, the first android release built specifically for a tablet screen instead of a stretched phone. 10.1 inch display, tegra 2 dual-core, 1 GB of ram, a 5 megapixel back camera and a 2 megapixel front camera, running the new tablet-only android build with no phone apps compatible. $799 with a two-year contract. the wi-fi only model shipped 27 march 2011 for $499. that was a hundred dollars more than an ipad 2 with the same storage.

the xoom shipped as google's answer to the ipad and got framed that way at every launch review. the honeycomb ui was new and the hardware was solid enough. the price was fifty to a hundred dollars over the equivalent apple product. the 4G LTE upgrade motorola promised for the verizon model did not arrive for months. the microSD slot was disabled at launch and only turned on in a firmware update weeks later. small things, but each one showed up as friction in reviews.

the xoom was carrier-locked at the US layer and effectively invisible outside north america. i was 27 in ankara in february 2011, running android on a low-end phone and watching the tablet category from a distance. the xoom never launched properly in turkey at retail. by the time an android tablet at a real price point mattered here it was 2013 and everyone was buying nexus 7s. the xoom sat in the strange US-carrier tier that made no sense for anywhere else.

~ the dossier ~

~ the origin ~

google chose motorola as the honeycomb launch partner specifically because they were the least likely to fork the OS the way samsung already had on froyo. the xoom got the pure-android treatment. no skin. no carrier bloatware beyond the verizon service apps, with direct google updates promised on a two-year window. andy rubin held one up at ces 2011 as the reference device.

the numbers landed under expectations. roughly 100,000 units in the first six weeks after launch, 250,000 by end of Q1 2011, peaking at 440,000 in Q2 2011 before dropping back to 100,000 in Q3. Q4 recovered to 200,000, then Q1 2012 sat at 100,000 again. compare to apple, which sold 11.8 million ipads in Q1 2011 and another 9.2 million in Q2 2011. the xoom was in a different category by an order of magnitude.

~ the postmortem ~

motorola announced the motorola xyboard in october 2011 and started shipping it in december through verizon and at&t. the xyboard was the same product refreshed as an 8.2 inch or 10.1 inch tablet with LTE built in from launch. it superseded the xoom immediately in the motorola lineup even though the xoom had been on the market less than a year. price was similar, verizon lock was still there, honeycomb was still the OS.

google bought motorola mobility for $12.5 billion in august 2011, closed the deal in may 2012. by then the tablet strategy had already moved on. the nexus 7 launched at google i/o 2012 at a $199 price point, from asus, running jelly bean. the xoom got its final android update to 4.1.2 jelly bean at the end of 2012 and dropped off the roadmap. no successor from motorola. no reference-device call-out from google.

~ the long tail ~

verizon kept servicing xoom accounts on cellular plans until 2017. by then the actual hardware was collector's-shelf material. the tablet is not remembered as a product. it is remembered as the first serious google-chosen android tablet, and the first proof that "solid hardware plus the current google OS" was not going to be enough against apple pricing.

the honeycomb design language survived the xoom for one more device cycle. android 4.0 ice cream sandwich merged the phone and tablet builds and dropped the tablet-specific look. after that the whole idea of android-tablet-as-flagship went dormant until the nexus 7 accidentally revived it a year later at a very different price.

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