Verizon Motorola Xoom Android Honeycomb tablet gets priced, $600 Wi-Fi-only, $799 with 3G

Vlad Bobleanta  By on 16 Feb 11

With Mobile World Congress 2011 in full throttle, it certainly seems like CES happened ages ago. Yet only little over a month has passed since then, and the main attraction in Las Vegas was the Motorola Xoom, the first tablet announced to run Android 3.0 Honeycomb, Google’s especially tablet-friendly version of its mobile operating system.

One of the key details that was left out of that announcement, and has since been heavily speculated on, was the pricing of this device. And now we have official word from Sanjay Jha himself, Motorola Mobility’s CEO.

So, the Xoom will be sold by Verizon unsubsidized, and getting a 3G-enabled tablet will set you back a whopping $799. This 3G-version of the tablet will be upgradeable to Verizon’s 4G LTE in the future.

There will also be a Wi-Fi-only version of the Xoom, which will be sold for about $600, according to Jha. “Competing with Apple you have to deliver premium products”, Mr. Jha said, conveniently leaving out the fact that the Xoom is even more expensive than the iPad. And while Apple is unanimously seen as a premium brand, and as such people are rather comfortable paying the famous ‘Apple tax’, the same probably can’t be said about Motorola. What is clear though is that it is following in the footsteps of Samsung, which decided to price its first ever Android tablet, the Galaxy Tab, well above the iPad in many markets.

Whether or not these strategies will remain successful in the long run remains to be seen, yet it has to be said that none of the premium, high-end Android smartphones are more expensive than Apple’s iPhone. And that strategy has clearly worked, propelling Android from nowhere to the No.2 mobile OS worldwide.

Via Reuters

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