android laugh factory: over 18 million laughs shipped from corea

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FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Sir DonkeyPunch posted:

Wow. So is the wifi only tablet not a segment anyone wants to fight apple for?

This is something of a hole in the entire Android market (three years on, and there still isn't an Android equivalent to the iPod Touch.) Android devices are sold primarily through mobile phone carriers, whose primary interest is in getting people to commit to a long-term service contract. They have no interest in devices that they can't charge out the nose to use on their networks, so wifi-only tablets and handhelds never make it to market.

Apple, on the other hand, is quite happy to sell wifi-only tablets and iPod Touches, which give them a really nice boost when they point to metrics like "iOS devices in use" and "potential iOS App Store customers", makes them a nice chunk of change in and of themselves, and gets customers enmeshed in the whole iTunes ecosystem (so when they move up to a smartphone or tablet, they'll choose Apple). They can do this because they control their own retail distribution, app store, and software stack in ways that Motorola and HTC do not.

# ¿ Feb 7, 2011 05:00

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# ¿ May 22, 2013 01:58

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

The Evan posted:

remember when all the dumb faggots said linux netbooks were iPad-killers?

now it's linux tablets

lmfao

Any minute now, consumers will stop caring about stupid bullshit like "ease of use" and "smooth interfaces" and start treating things like the number of cores in the dedicated graphics chip and support for open audio and video codecs with the importance they deserve. And then, mark my words, Apple will be truly hosed.

Sorry you're so deeply enmeshed in Jobs' RDF that you can't see it.

# ¿ Feb 8, 2011 07:14

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

The iPad is such a piece of poo poo, you can't even install your own file system on it. What a load of crap, must be nice to have an army of sheeple cultists willing to buy whatever shiny overpriced brushed-metal-and-glass piece of junk you poop out.

*is voted +5, informative*

# ¿ Feb 8, 2011 07:28

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Glumwheels posted:

Haha I'm laughing outloud at android tablets. I'm really going to lol when Dell presents their windows 7 tablet. Thats going to be the biggest pile of poo poo.

I suppose the one thing you can say in favor of Android tablets is you don't need a dedicated CTRL-ALT-DEL button to use them.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2011 21:58

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Cool, it's Pissflaps.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2011 20:02

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Where ya been, Pissflaps?

# ¿ Feb 12, 2011 20:02

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

The IYG tablet thread is a thing of beauty. Pretty much pure Lucy-pulls-away-the-football over and over again. A tablet in announced, everyone gets all psyched for it, it's revealed to be $900, everybody rends their garments and wonders how tech companies could be so STUPID, another tablet is announced, and the whole cycle repeats. Here's a great example:

An IYGer posted:

If all these things are true about the Xoom, you can switch my vote from Xoom to the Toshiba Tablet, assuming they don't alienate their customer base as well.

Welp, vaporware tablet #7 turned out to be a turd, just like tablets #1-6. Only one thing to do - put all my chips on vaporware tablet #8!

Another IYGer posted:

Right, the specs might make it more worthwhile on paper, but I think Apple's price for the lowest model is what people will inevitably compare it too. That isn't to say it isn't worth the money, just that lazy consumers won't realize it is before too late.

Stupid, lazy consumers who buy tablets without carefully considering what kind of graphics chip it has or whether they can flash it with third-party ROMs!

Yet another IYGer posted:

I don't understand why no vendor has stepped forward with a cheap low spec tablet for general media consumption.

Maybe, just maybe, Apple has figured something out about manufacturing consumer electronics that no one else has? No, everyone knows that Apple products are always overpriced and underpowered, 1996 never ended, at any moment now there will be a flood of $200 tablets that will run circles around the iPad, just you wait and see!

# ¿ Feb 14, 2011 02:06

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

poty posted:

its so stupid that apple spends the most time by far on the hardware and the software of its tablet* and yet its tablet is the cheapest. its just embarrassing

Apple is dealing in such great volumes now that they're becoming the Dell of consumer electronics. Dell crushed all of its PC competitors in the 1990s by optimizing their supply chain and buying components with huge volume discounts (which let them underprice their competitors, giving them more sales, and letting them lower prices again) until they chased everyone else out of the market. Apple's ability to use their $60B cash horde to pre-buy critical components years in advance at a huge discount means that it is physically impossible for other companies to match their prices, much less beat them.

What's funny is the number of people (including the executives of most of Apple's competitors) who don't realize this, and who still think that Apple only makes high-end boutique products for hipsters and fashion victims.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2011 22:47

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Atasi posted:

Small difference though is Dell did it by taking almost no margins on hardware and living off Intel subsidies, Apple does it by making money off of hardware by selling it at 25-30% margin. Other than that, dead on.

Undercutting everyone on price, selling in huge volumes, and making a luxury-tier margin is pretty unprecedented, and more proof that Apple is about a decade ahead of their competitors when it comes to how they run their business.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2011 22:57

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

what is this posted:

Tim Cook is the unsung hero of the iPad, btw. Apple couldn't have made such a product at such a price without his work streamlining operations and fixing manufacturing issues.

True.

The other funny thing about Apple is if someone did manage to produce a tablet that was price-competitive with the iPad, Apple's margin means they could just lower the price by $50 or $100, undercutting their competition again, and still be profitable. How on earth do you compete with that?

# ¿ Feb 14, 2011 23:01

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

graph posted:

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/14/...-billion-worth/

thats a lot of parts

Yep. Apple uses their cash, not just to pre-buy key future technology, they lend it to manufacturers so they can build the factories needed to manufacture the technology. Those "retina displays" on the current-model iPhone and iPod were manufactured in factories built with a zero-interest loan from Apple's cash reserves. Between that and the volumes that Apple orders, what manufacturer wouldn't jump into bed with Apple and offer them the best imaginable pricing?

Not just that, but Apple gets exclusivity on those Samsung parts, having pre-paid for 100% of the production. if the iPad 2013 comes out with some really amazing Samsung screen technology, nobody will be able to make a comaparable device, because they can't get their hands on Samsung's screen at any price.

(and I should have written "cash hoard" not "cash horde")

# ¿ Feb 14, 2011 23:58

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

graph posted:

i didn't realize it was that deep, jesus

After Apple's last quarterly statement, I read a blog bit about companies that Apple could buy outright with their cash on hand and still have some left over.

Ah, here it is:

Visa Inc. $59.63b
American Express Company $55.8b
The Boeing Company $53.16b
Morgan Stanley $43.5b
The Dow Chemical Company $41.8b
NIKE, Inc. 40.22b
Eli Lilly & Co. $40.12b
Texas Instruments Inc. $40.92b
Nokia $39.92b
News Corporation $37.72b

420 smoke weed, make tablets, buy Boeing erryday

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 00:03

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

graph posted:

also is there an article you got this info off of, would seem like an interesting read

http://www.asymco.com/

http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/23/th...ity-and-supply/ - Apple using its cash to fund manufacturing

http://www.asymco.com/2011/01/19/20...lion-next-year/ - Apple's cash reserves

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 00:10

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Atasi posted:

Yeah it turns out that manufacturing matters, despite everyone wanting to outsource everything and just provide the service layer.

One of my favorite things about Apple is that they don't call attention to any of this. It's perfectly fine with them if people want to keep thinking they just sell overpriced trinkets to a cult of kool-aid drinking hispter douchebags, and that their success is entirely due to "marketing" and "Steve Jobs' RDF".

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 00:36

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

johndis posted:

is the ipad the first big product theyve done this with tho? or did it start with their ipods? i cant imagine they could do it once they switched to intel procs in their mac line, since the poo poo was already being manufactured

Nobody knows - they keep this all on the q.t. and bury it deep in their SEC filings. But the first public sighting of the strategy was in 2005 or so, when they bought up ALL of the NAND Flash memory being produced that year ahead of time for the iPod Nano and Shuffle. Which, you'll remember, pretty much finished off all of their competitors in the MP3 player market.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 00:43

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Unexpected EOF posted:

Apple legit seems to be the only company who knows what the gently caress they're doing anymore. Like everyone trying to compete with them has contracted some kind of virus that makes them unable to respond to competition.

Steve Jobs must go to bed every night thanking the good lord above for 1) immunosupressants and 2) competitors whose response to the iPhone introduction was to call all the executives into a room the next day and agree that it was physically impossible for the demonstrated phone to exist, and could therefore be ignored as some sort of tricky gypsy illusion.

Of the big four smartphone companies at the time of the iPhone introduction (RIM, Nokia, Palm, MS), only Palm managed an even-halfway coherent response. And that was such a failure that the company ended up being bought for scrap by one of their competitors. That's the high-water mark for old-line companies dealing with the iPhone. Palm. Everyone else has responded even worse than Palm.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 02:05

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Unexpected EOF posted:

Palm's response would have been a lot more well received if it weren't for three major factors:

1. The fact that Palm had been an absolute joke pretty much for the past 5 years
2. The absolute poo poo hardware that they tossed WebOS on
3. Those loving retarded ads that made no loving sense

This is all true.

And Palm still managed a better response than MS, RIM, or Nokia, all three of which took several years to realize that, hey, iPhone (and Android) were eating their loving lunch.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 02:11

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

DuckConference posted:

As companies get bigger, more and more of their staff are in the middle of the pyramid sending and receiving TPS reports. The bureaucracy that's essential for just keeping the lights on is so huge that making changes or innovating is really hard.
Except when said innovation is being driven by the guy at the top who is a megalomaniac genius who controls everything according to his will.

Apple is constructed in such a way as to minimize that, even in the absence of The Only CEO That Matters. They have a very limited product line (they brag about how you could put one of everything they make on a single kitchen table, not bad for the second most valuable company in America), and what little we know about their internal structure points towards small teams and a flat management structure. Apple is very purposefully trying hard not to become a big sprawling do-everything company like Sony or Microsoft or HP, precisely to avoid that kind of middle-management bloat and turf war paralysis. 1990s Apple had that in spades, no one wants to go back to that.

At the other extreme is Nokia, which has more than 1,000 software engineers. And look at the contribution those thousand-plus engineers (plus their counterparts at Intel) have made to the future of the company!

Engadget reviewing the MeeGo today posted:

We'll be blunt about it: it's actually rather shocking how little seems to have been improved since June. Intel claims the software is now in an Alpha stage (it was in pre-Alpha at Computex), though we're not even sure it is that. The live updating pane interface, which reminds us a bit of the webOS cards, is certainly a neat idea and it's actually decently attractive, but it's when you start to dig in deep that the glitches and the lack of applications Intel's got at the moment become very apparent. While the video and music players worked, the browser, which is based on Chromium and happens to be a larger part of the OS, was frustrating to say the least. While we could live with the lack of pinch-to-zoom at the moment (Intel says it will come), the slow scrolling and double tapping to zoom just made the browsing experience downright disappointing. On the bright side, Intel's working with Swype so text input in both the browser and e-mail client was actually rather swift.

However, beyond those four or so apps, there's nothing else at the moment in terms of applications, and while Intel's promising to bring its AppUp store to the platform (it's even holding a developers meeting on it here at MWC), it wasn't willing to discuss a time frame on that. In fact, Richmond wouldn't even give us an idea of when the tablet UI would be ready.

edit:

what is this posted:

yes but palm hired a bunch of people from apple. that's how webOS happened.

My point is that Palm at least realized that iPhone was a big step forward that they needed to compete with (even to the point of hiring as much of the iPhone team as possible to do it). MS's response was literally Ballmer laughing out loud at the iPhone, RIM decided it was a cheap magic trick, and Nokia...well, their response is quoted above.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 02:25

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Sniep posted:

I like to think that Jobs has like 8 concurrent separate product teams walled off from each other to come out with similiar implementations but given complete latitude to gently caress around and experiment, and then gives each a 10 minute review playing with it and picks one (or two) and the rest are poo poo canned.

By all accounts, this is how product development is done at Apple. A lot of polished prototypes are developed, tested, and (mostly) canned. Supposedly there are 100 product proposals that make it to the foamcore mock-up and keynote presentation, which is winnowed down into 10 products which get full prototypes and manufacturing specs, which result in one released product. Jobs has publicly said that Apple's great strength is in the products they've decided NOT to manufacture - perfectly good things that are lacking in just one regard or don't quite fit the direction that the company wants to go. This is where all those weird Apple product rumors that never pan out come from - somebody tried something, they weren't quite able to get it working, they apply for the patent for it anyway, then somebody notices the filing and everybody is all "OMG the next iPhone tracks eye movement for commands and has a touchscreen on the back!!1!"

The iPad team delivered a complete ready-for-manufacturing prototype to Jobs for testing. He fiddled with it for a week, then threw it back at them, told them it was garbage (not enough battery life), and to start over from scratch. Six months later he did the same thing to the next prototype they gave him. Only the third model was good enough to produce and sell. This is why there were rumors about Apple producing a tablet computer for years and years before January 2010 - Apple had developed several finished tablets, they just refused to produce them when they didn't meet Jobs' high standards.

Apple's preference to kill half-baked products rather than release them and promise to do better in release 2.0 is one of the reasons they have a diamond-solid customer satisfaction rating. Everyone else poops out terrible Android 2.x tablets and mutters about Apple's cult of unthinking sheeple when they don't sell.

I'd love to someday see Apple's Graveyard of Rejected Prototypes.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 07:22

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Godzilla07 posted:

another tablet failure from htc

aluminum body and pressure-sensitive capacitive stylus, but tablet sense, single-core when everyone else has dual cores lined up, no honeycomb and the kicker is 4 hours of video playback

wrap it up android tabletailures

It promises a "groundbreaking pen experience."

Ahahahahaha

Engadget review posted:

We spent a bit of quality time with a Flyer unit recently, although we weren't allowed to turn it on, and our early impressions are rather mixed.

Someone went and redefined "quality time" when I was sleeping, I see.

# ¿ Feb 15, 2011 12:09

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Autism Sundae posted:

$600 for a tablet with buggy os and no apps or same money for ipad 2 in like 2 months. hard choic

That Article posted:

It looks and feels the part of a proper iPad killer

Less specs, less software, and more expensive than an iPad 1, but will be released after the iPad 2 = wrap it up Appleailures.

# ¿ Feb 16, 2011 19:05

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

qirex posted:

�We felt that our ability to deliver 50Mb/s would justify the $799 price point. It is 32GB with 3G and a free upgrade to 4G. Being competitive with iPad is important. We feel that from the hardware and capabilities we deliver we are at least competitive and in a number of ways better [than the iPad].�

"We're going to compete with Apple, arguably the world's most powerful premium brand, by releasing something more expensive. If Apple could sell 14.8 million iPads in less than a year, just think how large the market is for devices with even higher prices. Apple doesn't pay enough attention to the high end of the market, that's where we're going to plant our flag."

Good luck with that.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2011 23:10

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Ryouga Inverse posted:

"Also we feel that our features are better than the iPad but we don't really know how. Just a feeling."

"It's more expensive, but it's at least competitive with the iPad, features-wise."

THE MOTOROLA XOOM - PRETTY MUCH THE SAME AS AN IPAD, ONLY MORE EXPENSIVE.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2011 23:32

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

qirex posted:

I really wonder how long it's going to be for the rest of the electronics industry to finally begin to understand that confusing consumers with 80 million specs and numbers and slightly different product versions is short money

Apple is pretty much the only company that understands that selling to consumers is a completely different ball of wax than selling to techies (who love specs) or big enterprises (who love feature checklists). Only Nintendo seems to have even half the clue that Apple does.

# ¿ Feb 17, 2011 23:44

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

johndis posted:

theyve pretty much dominated the market of people who can afford a mac yeah. no ones gonna go out and buy a $1000+ windows computer any more, but if they dont have much $$$ they really have no other option at the ~$500 range

but the people who can afford a mac are still the minority (obviously a high profit market tho), especially if you look at it globally

Apple's Mac sales growth has outpaced the rest of the PC industry for the last 19 quarters straight. And they make hundreds of dollars on each sale, unlike HP and Toshiba and Dell, who lose money on most hardware sales (they make it back by getting paid for pre-installed trial software and co-branding arrangements). Apple has a small sliver of the overall global PC industry, but it the sliver where all the money is.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2011 09:19

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

It was low DVD prices that killed Blockbuster.

When DVDs came along in the mid-late 1990s, the studios went to BB and said "Hey, instead of pricing these things at $60 like we do for most VHS tapes, we'll price them low, like $20, and encourage people to buy them. Since you have 10,000 locations or something and people already line up in your store every Friday, we'd like to sell them through your stores, give you a special deal." BB laughed at them, said they had a perfectly good model with rentals and late fees and selling $3 boxes of candy to people trapped in waiting lines, and told them to gently caress off. So the studios went to Wal-Mart, which saw the idea of selling new release DVDs as loss leaders to be a good way to get people to come into their stores every week (and do some shopping). DVDs became available so cheaply that people stopped renting them (with all the hassle of standing in lines and late fees and two trips to the store and arguing with the clerks and having the movie you want being checked out before you got to the store) and just bought them.

That was the crippling blow to BB. Netflix, streaming, torrents, On Demand, and Redbox were just the air-juggle combo strikes that boosted the damage multiplier.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2011 00:09

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

golgo13sf posted:

You answered your own question. I remember going to the video store where they had 1 copy of Robocop that cost the store over $100 that you could reserve and if you were lucky you got to watch it with 2 weeks of reserving it.

VHS tapes were priced at two tiers - most were aimed at video stores who'd buy one or more copies at $60-$80-$100 so they'd have them on their shelves (and hope they'd pay for themselves by being rented a bunch of times).

Some movies were considered to be big enough hits that they could be sold to consumers at a discount, hoping that increased volume in consumer purchases would make up for the money lost when video stores got their copies for $20 instead of $80. PRETTY WOMAN on VHS sold for $15 back in 1992 or whenever, and it was a big deal. But most non-blockbuster movies were at the high end of two figures.

This is why most video store shelves were full of terrible direct-to-video B movies from no-name studios and distributors - because they were sold to store cheaply ($20-$40 a tape instead of $60-$100) and you could fill your store up without breaking the bank. This is also why Blockbuster drove all the mom&pop stores out of business (because they could demand huge volume discounts from studios because they bought in such large numbers), and why the studios wanted to change the model (once BB runs all the other stores out of business and saturates the market with locations, the market for VHS tapes becomes fixed and never grows). Studios had big catalogs and wanted to make money selling copies to people, Blockbuster said "gently caress off", studios went to Wal-Mart (and Best Buy and all the other big-box retailers), customers started buying DVDs buy the caseload, and that was it for BB.

BB erred because they didn't realize how much everyone who dealt with them hated them. As soon as consumers had a halfway-credible alternative to standing in line for 45 minutes on a Friday night waiting for rent their fifth-best choice for a movie (that was probably blurry and flickery), they bolted.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2011 00:34

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

JawnV6 posted:

the story i always heard was that vhs tapes were super expensive until Batman and they tried to sell that at $20 and a bunch of people bought it and vhs tapes were $20 after that

Smash hits that they knew they could sell a million of (like the aforementioned PRETTY WOMAN) were $20. Everything else was still priced to squeeze video rental stores.

The studios wanted to change from a rental model to a consumer sales model, thought DVDs (with their low production costs) would be a good way to do it, BB told them to gently caress off, studios shrugged and went to Wal-Mart, people went nuts buying DVDs (for less than the price of the TITANIC soundtrack, you could buy TITANIC in beautiful never-wears-out digital form with lots of special features), BB is now a rotting bankrupt husk, and good riddance.

Brick and mortar content sales are just in a death spiral. Tower Records, Hollywood Video, Sam Goody's, FYE, The Warehouse, Virgin Megastore, Borders, Blockbuster - all dead or soon to die.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2011 00:46

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS posted:

blockbuster's big plan to get out of dire financial straits? a netflix ripoff

Not just that - my local grocery store has a big blue Blockbuster DVD vending machine next to the coin-counter and the lottery ticket dispenser. Complete RedBox ripoff.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2011 00:52

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Amethyst posted:

I know that tech companies see flash as their savior because ipad doesn't have it, but it's goddamn pathetic to see them all spruiking a lovely web platform that should be obsolete as a killer feature.

It's funny to watch these companies race to embrace Flash as a point of differentiation between their products and Apple's, only to have it slowly sink in that Apple ditched Flash for very good reasons (resource hog, buggy, incompatible UI, kills battery, puts control of your platform in Adobe's hands). Gruber thinks that the delay of Flash on the Xoom is so the make-or-break initial reviews of the device aren't full of crabbing about its terrible battery life.

Apple's rejection of Flash wasn't because of Steve Jobs' hubris or ego or control-freakery, it was because he wanted to avoid jumping into a tar pit. All these other companies saw that as a sign that they should plunge right in. It's hilarious.

# ¿ Feb 21, 2011 23:35

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Jonny 290 posted:

yeah iirc earthquakes bring a bunch of fluid dynamics into the situation since on that level silt/sand pretty much acts like a fluid

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soil_liquefaction

This is a big problem where anything has been built on landfill, or along coasts and rivers - you know, like pretty much EVERY modern city.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2011 02:19

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Why, it's almost as if Apple looked at the 20-year history of pen-stylus computing, noticed that every single attempt at it (including its own Newton project) was either an abject failure or only barely achieved niche success, and decided to go with a different UI - say, maybe the one from its runaway success iPhone/iPod Touch line.

Heh, stupid Apple.

# ¿ Feb 23, 2011 05:33

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Kirk posted:

anyway linux is gay enjoyable human being poo poo and the xoom will be a failure, any news about the ipad 2 yet

Announcement scheduled for March 2, supposed to have a front-facing camera (for videochat) but no rear-facing one. Apple should sell about 25-30 million of them this year.

# ¿ Feb 24, 2011 10:01

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

qirex posted:

This will put a smile on your face:

"relatively well" is the new "quite smooth".

# ¿ Feb 28, 2011 20:47

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

IYG remains your best comedy value

quote:

My Xoom can no longer install any apps, whether it be from an APK or market. All the "usual" fixes such as clearing cache or remounting the SD card either don't work or dont apply to me. I hope I don't have to reset the device

WRAP IT UP IPADAILURES etc.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 20:15

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

BonzoESC posted:

wait i thought the xoom's sd card slot was non-functional?

the one in my n1 is behind the battery, and i'd almost rather it just do it iphone style

I think it's just cargo cult troubleshooting. Plug and unplug everything, turn it off and on, toggle the WiFi/3G, hope something fixes it.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 20:19

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

The Android Tablet Laugh Factory is still working around the clock. This latest delivery is from Barron's.

quote:

Analysts at Detwiler Fenton this morning write that Motorola Mobility�s (MMI) �Xoom� tablet, which went on sales last week at Verizon Communications�s (VZ) Verizon Wireless, may be having a rough first go of it.

The tablet computer debuted last week to fairly favorable reviews from, among others, The New York Times�s David Pogue, with The Wall Street Journal�s Walt Mossberg calling it the first real competitor to Apple�s (AAPL) iPad.

�After almost one week on the market, it appears that the sell through of Motorola�s Xoom has been extremely light,� reports the firm, without specifying sources for the information. Detwiler attributes the apparent lackluster results to, �its high price, lack of consumer applications and the anticipation for today�s expected Apple (AAPL) iPad 2 announcement,� which is expected to be this afternoon.

Reports out of Asia, moreover, that the Xoom might be coming out of factories at a rate of 700,000 to 800,000 units this quarter are �outrageous,� Detwiler asserts, given the shortfall in this first week.

Moreover, Best Buy (BBY) having the exclusive to retail the thing, combined with its high price, appears to have been a mistake on Motorola�s part:

"We believe that total channel sell-in for Q1 will only amount to 150K-200K units, depending on how aggressive Verizon (VZ) gets with inventory stocking. It appears that BBY is sitting on enough inventory to get the retailer through the end of Q1 without problem at this point. Note that VZ and Best Buy (BBY) have a 60 day exclusive on the product in the US a major marketing mistake by MMI in our opinion. While MMI launched the Xoom at $799 at retail (or $599 subsidized with 2-year contract at VZ), retail contacts believe an unsubsidized price point of $649 and subsidized price point of $499 is about the price ceiling for such a product. However we don�t expect to see such a price point anytime soon unless MMI is willing to sacrifice margins and/or VZ ramps up subsidy support."

Detwiler expects Best Buy will �rethink� the pricing of the device to try and boost sales.

No wonder, then, that The Journal�s Ben Worthen today writes of looming talk of a tablet price war.

I'm sure that being a complete and total sales flop will have no effect on Motorola's promise of regular, timely future system updates.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 22:41

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

Gruberpostin'

Preston Motherfucking Gralla posted:

Motorola Xoom versus the iPad 2 --- the Xoom is a clear winner

Apple's revamped iPad, the iPad 2, is certainly an improvement over the original iPad. But when compared head to head against the Motorola Xoom, the Xoom still wins. Here's why.

As I explained in a previous blog, Eight reasons the Motorola Xoom beats the iPad, the Xoom is far superior to the original iPad. And now that the iPad 2 has been announced, it's clear that the Xoom is superior to the new iPad, for almost all of the same reasons.

The major new additions to the iPad include a dual-core processor and front and rear cameras, so in those instances, it's caught up to the Xoom. The new svelter and slightly thinner design is good as well. A gyroscope has been added, which the Xoom already has. And software tweaks, via the new iOS 4.3, are welcome as well.

But that still leaves the Xoom a better tablet than the iPad. Start with the operating system. With iOS 4.3, iOS was tweaked but didn't get a dramatic overhaul. Android 3.0, called Honeycomb, is simply better than the iOS for a number of reasons. It handles notifications, multi-tasking and app switching better. The widgets still outpace anything on the iOS. And Honeycomb has more features and is more customizable. The iOS 4.3 tweaks did nothing to change any of that.

The Chrome-like browser built into Xoom trumps the Safari running on the iPad 2. Xoom's browser sports tabs, will sync bookmarks with PC, Mac, and Linux versions of Chrome, and uses a single box for typing URLs and searching.

Xoom, of course, will be able to play Flash relatively soon. The iPad 2 will never do it. Clearly, being able to run Flash is better than being banned from running Flash.

When you buy an iPad 2, you'll be subject to the whims of what Apple wants you to download and doesn't want you to download. Want to be able to get information from the WikiLeaks site using an app, for example? Don't try doing it on your iPad 2 --- Apple has banned any app from letting you do that. It bans plenty of other apps as well. With the Xoom, you can download and use any app you want.

Finally, the Xoom's built-in apps such as Gmail, Google Maps, and Google Calendar still trump anything built into the iPad 2. and using the Xoom's Tegra 2 chip, you get nifty new features, such as vector graphics and 3D rendering in Google Maps.

# ¿ Mar 2, 2011 23:05

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

golgo13sf posted:

I genuinely don't understand. Apple is not magic, they don't have future Terminator technology, nor do they have some understanding of physics that the rest of us don't. The built a product using current technology that runs smoothly with excellent battery life.

Yet somehow nobody else can duplicate this feat.

You'd think business strategies like "Don't ship half-baked products, particularly ones that you're betting the future of your company on" would be kind of, well, obvious, but in the tech industry it seems they are deepest mysteries that only a 33rd Degree Ascended Master like Steve Jobs has access to.

It's 2011 and Apple's competitors are still failing to produce a tablet that's feature/price/experience comparable to the 2010 model. Meanwhile, Apple just locked up its parts supply for 2013 at a huge volume discount.

I'm thinking Apple's stock is significantly underpriced.

# ¿ Mar 3, 2011 15:17

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# ¿ May 22, 2013 01:58

FMguru: Sep 10, 2003

MaberMK posted:

that guy is really butthurt about ipads

that guy posted:

See previous:

* How Steve Jobs turned a finger spot into a death grip
* Google responds to Steve Jobs' activation counting accusations
* Why does Android have Steve Jobs rattled?

# ¿ Mar 3, 2011 21:35

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