Xoom’s shares opened at $21 on the Nasadaq Stock Market, up 31 percent from their $16 offer price. The stock had climbed above $23 in midday trading.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

A big step for Xoom and its investors — which include venture capital firms Sequoia Capital, New Enterprise Associates and Agilus Ventures — but one for which the San Francisco-based company seems well poised. Its revenue grew 68 percent in the first nine months of 2012, to $57.8 million. And it estimates revenue to be in the range of $21.9 million to $22.4 million for the three months ended December 31, 2012 — a nice bump over the $15.6 million it generated during the same period in 2011.

The company said today that 100 of the 6,200 it sold through Woot.com between October and December of 2011 may not have been properly reformatted.

In other words, they still contained the personal information of their previous owners — everything from email and social networking passwords to photos and documents.

What an incredible cock-up.

Motorola’s solution to the problem? To “actively pursue the return of the impacted refurbished units” (visit motorola.com/xoomreturn if you think you may have one). Also: offer customers whose personal data might have been compromised a two-year subscription to credit rating agency Experian’s ProtectMyID identity theft service.

A decent gesture, I suppose — unless some miscreant has already pilfered your personal information from the device in the four months it has taken Motorola to notice its mistake.

“Motorola sincerely regrets and apologizes for any inconvenience this situation has caused,” the company said in a statement.

Update: The peanut gallery chimes in:

can already see great Synergies in Google Motorolla Aquisition. Google has Personal data and Moto the means of sharing it @JohnPaczkowski

February 3, 2012 2:16 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@yoda_2little

Chris

Motorola said it grew sales of Atrix, Droid 3 and other smartphones by 400,000 from the second quarter to 4.8 million, part of a 5.5% overall increase in mobile device sales to 11.6 million. However, its Xoom tablet computer, aimed at taking on Apple Inc.’s market-leading iPad, dropped to 100,000, less than one-fourth the second quarter results.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

When Motorola announced the Xoom tablet – the first device to run the Honeycomb version of Android — the understanding was that it would initially run on 3G, but would quickly be upgradeable to support Verizon’s faster 4G LTE-based network.

The company later clarified that to get the update, consumers would actually have to send in their tablets. Motorola didn’t offer a firm time frame, but said it would happen in the first half of the year. As that deadline approached, Motorola and Verizon said that it would not be out until later this summer.

That deadline passed as well. However, Verizon plans to start the upgrades tomorrow, AllThingsD has learned. Xoom owners should get their devices back in about six business days and don’t need to change their data plan, Verizon said. Owners are encouraged to back up their data.

The months of delays have infuriated early Xoom customers, such as Steve Landsberg of Los Angeles, who bought a unit the day it landed on store shelves in hopes of getting a speedier connection than was available on his 3G-equipped iPad.

Landsberg said that he was told the Xoom would quickly be able to be upgraded, but months came and went with either no word or contradictory statements on when the update would come.

“I’m not an unreasonable person, but this is ridiculous,” Landsberg said earlier this week.

Verizon also plans to start selling a 4G-equipped Xoom in stores starting Oct. 13. It will sell for $499, with a new 2-year contract.

With the $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, the iconic but struggling maker of mobile devices, Google has put a huge stake in the ground in this highly competitive market and thereby shaken up the entire ecosystem.

A lot of this is about patents, as Google CEO Larry Page said in his blog post about the megadeal this morning, and about acquiring a bigger portfolio that Google has long sought for its Android mobile operating system and has been unsuccessful at getting for itself, despite onerous efforts. Since Motorola has been in the mobile arena for so long, it has a large trove of important ones.

But the dramatic acquisition by Google is also a declaration that mobile is more important to it than the skein of alliances it has built for Android with phone makers worldwide, as part of its objective of making it the dominant mobile platform for smartphones and tablets globally.

While Google has been reaching out to other hardware partners to assure them, and has said they all will remain the same in Android-land, the large mobile manufacturers who have placed their trust in Google — especially Samsung or HTC — have to be wondering what to do now.

Make no mistake — they already resent Google from time to time, the way Compaq or Dell has resented Microsoft in the PC business.

But, since Google already showed favoritism to Motorola by letting them do the first Honeycomb tablet, the Xoom (although it didn’t do any good), that discomfort will only increase now.

While Google managed to get them into lockstep on today’s announcement, with a whole Web page titled “Quotes From Android Partners,” each of them using the exact same phrase “defending Android” in their quotes feels a little like they are victims of Stockholm syndrome.

Yes, we concur with everything the Borg tells us to! Defending! Android! We’re Droids too! (Calling Patty Hearst, stat!)

The impact on everyone — from Microsoft and its partner Nokia to Apple to Research In Motion and, also, to all the wireless carriers — will be felt immediately.

And, of course, by government regulators, who have watched warily as Google has marched into business after adjacent business to its core search one.

This deal — which will require approval — is sure to even further put all of Google’s businesses in the crosshairs of rivals, who will agitate for fervent investigations.

While Android has been conceived at Google and has an “autonomous unit” with the company — run by longtime mobile vet Andy Rubin — it has now entered a new and perhaps dangerous phase for all involved, including Google.

Because while such a union is not uncommon in the mobile business — Apple and RIM do software and hardware together and Google has released its own Nexus phone (made by others) — no one has done it via acquisition and in such a definitive way.

And what an acquisition it is. Or, perhaps more accurately, could be.

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

Related posts

• Google: We’re Spending $12.5 Billion on Motorola to ‘Protect’ Android
• Motoogle: BOOM! The Mobile Business Just Got Completely Blown Up
• Google’s Motorola Deal Will Spur Antitrust Regulators to Action
• Watch Google Android Kingpin — and Motorola Acquirer — Andy Rubin Unplugged (Video)
• Defense Spending: Google Arms Itself With Moto Patents
• Is Google’s Motorola Deal the Break That Windows Phone Needed?
• Should Google Keep Motorola’s Patents and Sell Off the Hardware Business?
• Motorola Could Get Google Closer to Your Living Room — If the Cable Guys Play Along
• U.S. Carriers Silent on Motoroogle, but France Telecom Gives It a Thumbs Up
• Google-Motorola Deal Includes $2.5 Billion Reverse Termination Fee
• Google Can’t Say Hello To Hulu Now. (Can It?)
• More Google news
• More Android news
• More Motorola Mobility news

(Image courtesy of the United States Department of Energy)

Buried deep in the complaint that led to a preliminary injunction against Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Europe is mention of additional complaints against Motorola and a German company called JAY-tech. Details on the actions are slim, but as FOSS Patents notes, it appears Apple has already won an injunction against whatever tablet JAY-tech had been planning, and is perhaps asking the court for another against the Motorola Xoom, though that’s not at all clear.

Either way, this is a significant escalation of hostilities between the two companies, which until recently were thought to be battling it out in the U.S. over patents related to the iPhone and Motorola’s Droid handsets.

According to Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, the iPad will dominate the tablet market for the better part of the next decade. It will end this year with an 85 percent share, and while that percentage will decline gradually over the ensuing years, it will never fall so much that Apple loses the lead it claimed when the device first debuted. In 2015, for example, the iPad will still have a 72.5 percent share, with more than 101 million units shipped.

And in 2020?

Wolf figures the iPad will command a 60 percent share of the tablet market by then, with nearly 140 million units shipped.

How is that possible, given the unceasing cavalcade of new tablets parading to market? Simple, says Wolf: None of those tablets has managed to gain any traction with consumers.

“Future tablets are more likely to steal share from one another than from the iPad,” Wolf explains. “The tablet market has been inundated with new models — the Xoom running on Android’s Honeycomb operating system, RIM’s PlayBook running on the company’s QNX operating system, HP’s TouchPad running on webOS, and many others. All of them have been greeted with a yawn and lackluster sales. None have been able to undercut the aggressively priced iPad, because the iPad’s component costs are materially lower than those of competing tablets. In the case of tablets, the only thing that matters — that turns what’s otherwise a slab into a versatile device — are the apps. And the applications available on the tablets introduced this year number at best in the hundreds. In comparison, more than 100,000 applications are available on the iPad.”

That will, of course, change over time. Still, that’s quite a lead Apple has nabbed, and one that it will undoubtedly continue to extend even as its rivals rush to catch it.

In providing guidance along with its quarterly results, Motorola said it expects tablet sales to drop in the current quarter as its Xoom faces greater competition from a range of other tablets running Google’s Honeycomb operating system and as it prepares new products. Average selling prices have also dropped, in part as the company has cut prices.

On the plus side, the company said that a growing number of applications are starting to be made available for Android tablets. A mail-in update allowing Verizon Xoom customers to upgrade their device to support 4G LTE, originally due by June, is now slated for September.

Motorola said it expects total smartphone and tablet sales combined to be somewhere around 21 million to 23 million for the full year, with CEO Sanjay Jha saying that it has plans to offer a number of new smartphones in time for the back-to-school shopping season as well as two new LTE-ready tablets later this year.

Jha noted that the company had the benefit of being first to market among Android tablets with the Xoom, but that also posed some challenges.

“You have less time to cost optimize,” Jha said. The new tablets, he said, are designed to be more competitive on costs, adding later that carriers have reacted favorably to the forthcoming products and said that the company should be poised to do better in the fourth quarter.

The company said its delayed Droid Bionic — a dual-core 4G LTE phone — should be in stores in September with another LTE phone also due out before the end of the year.

“It’s my expectation that LTE will be a strong focus for carriers in the fourth quarter,” Jha said, saying that he believes Motorola will have a good position, though he declined to forecast how big that market will be.

Speaking on the company’s conference call with analysts, Jha also commented on the company’s patent portfolio in the wake of investor Carl Icahn suggesting the company consider selling off some of its patents. Noting the company has more than 17,000 patents granted and over 7,000 patents pending, Jha said the company is always reviewing its options. With new companies entering the mobile space, he said, “our patent portfolio in increasingly important.”

Even when pressed by analysts, though, Jha didn’t offer much in the way of specifics. “We will do all that we can to create and enhance our shareholder value using all of the assets we have at our disposal,” he said.

The cellphone maker, which was spun off earlier this year from the networking and equipment half of Motorola, said it had a loss of 19 cents per share, compared to earnings of 27 cents per share in the second quarter of last year.

On a non-standard basis, the company said it would have had earnings of 9 cents per share. On that basis, the company had a per-share loss of 30 cents in the year-ago quarter, including a large legal settlement provision.

The company had forecast in April that it would post anywhere from breakeven results to a profit of 12 cents per share, excluding charges.

In the quarter, Motorola said it shipped 11 million mobile devices, including 4.4 million smartphones and 440,000 tablets.

Looking forward, the company said to expect this quarter’s earnings, excluding charges, to be anywhere from breakeven to a profit of 10 cents per share. For the full year, the company expects per share earnings in the range of 48 cents to 60 cents.

“With a focus on profitable growth and delivering differentiated LTE smartphones and tablets, we expect to achieve profitability in Mobile Devices in the fourth quarter and for the full year 2011,” CEO Sanjay Jha said in a statement.

DisplayMate gave both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the iPad 2 a grade of A-minus for their screens, while the Motorola Xoom, Asus Transformer and Acer Iconia A500 all received a grade of B-minus. The firm had previously sung the praises of the iPad 2 display, which it called largely comparable to the iPhone 4′s Retina display, albeit with lower pixel density.

“While the iPad 2 display easily outperformed all of the previous Android Tablets, with the new Galaxy Tab 10.1, Samsung has delivered the first Android Tablet with an impressive, potentially outstanding display that beats the iPad 2 — except it produces gaudy oversaturated colors,” DisplayMate president Ray Soneira said in an email.

Given that the tablets are all roughly similar in price, Soneira said the wide disparity in screen quality is somewhat surprising.

“This is especially true for the Android tablets because they all have identical 10.1 inch 1280 x 800 screens running virtually identical software,” he said in a report being released on Tuesday. “One major issue is the manufacturers are all scrambling to get their products to market so there isn’t enough time to properly engineer everything. But the biggest factor is undoubtedly the explosive growth in the demand and volume of mobile displays, so many existing and new factories don’t have the time and/or expertise to properly manufacture and calibrate all the displays they are producing.”

Soneira offers some free advice to the industry, suggesting a number of things all the major tablet makers could do to improve their screens in the next go-round. Among his recommendations are improving the software that adjusts screen brightness to match lighting conditions and reducing the reflectiveness of the screen.

“All of these tablets have large shiny mirror-like screens that are good enough to use for personal grooming,” Soneira said. While that might mean one less item that one needs to pack in one’s suitcase, Soneira quips, “it’s actually a very bad feature that requires higher screen brightness and more battery power to offset the reflected light.”

Another interesting fact Soneira points out is that the 10.1-inch screen of the large Android tablets doesn’t necessarily pack more screen real estate than the 9.7-inch iPad.

“Most people (and reviewers) seem to believe that the 10.1 inch screens (measured diagonally) on the Android Tablets are larger than the 9.7 inch iPad screen — but they are actually 5 percent smaller than the iPad in terms of the image area of the screen, which is what really counts,” Soneira said. “This is due to both aspect ratio geometry (the screen area decreases as the aspect ratio increases) and the Android system bar, which reduces the image area.”

However, the numbers illustrate just how much sales have continued to grow. Sales have risen from three million or four million units per quarter in the first two quarters of iPad shipments to 9.25 million last quarter. That’s more than the company sold in last year’s holiday quarter and appears to be vastly more than any rival has sold in total. Even Android phone owners tend to buy iPads, rather than an Android tablet.

This lends credence to the philosophy that there isn’t a large tablet market nearly so much as there is a large iPad market. While some expect (and may yet be right) that the iPad will lose share over time, just as the iPhone did to Android, others see the iPad as more akin to the iPod. It was a luxury item, as opposed to a phone, which is something of a necessity in the modern world. And when an item is a luxury, more people are likely to go for the luxury brand, if they decide they want the product at all.

There are other parallels to the early days of the iPod. Remember that when Apple’s iPod came out it was not the first hard-drive-based music player. Indeed, there were devices like the Nomad Jukebox. However, Apple did have the early exclusive on Toshiba’s tiny 1.8-inch hard drive, the component that gave the iPod its significantly smaller shape.

While Apple doesn’t have a stranglehold on any one component with the iPad, it does seem to have shored up enough supply, and at favorable enough prices, that competitors can’t really compete much on price. To match or slightly beat Apple’s price, it would seem hardware makers already have to forsake profit margins.

Nonetheless, one recent study did show that Apple may be losing some of its total command of the tablet market.

However, as Daring Fireball points out, those numbers reflect shipments into the channel. One of the key questions that will only be answered in the coming months is whether any of the competitive tablets can continue to sell well beyond their initial shipments needed to fill retail shelves and inventory.

Plus, the field of Android tablets is growing ever more crowded, presumably putting pressure on prices as well as on device makers to continually upgrade their models. While Motorola had the first Honeycomb tablet with the Xoom, it has since been followed by ones from LG, Acer, Toshiba and Samsung, to name but a few. Meanwhile, Lenovo just announced two new models and Sony is offering up two Honeycomb tablets of its own later this year.

And HP and Research In Motion are hoping to grab share with tablets based on their own operating systems.

Then, of course, there is the question of apps. Apple has surpassed 100,000 programs that are optimized for its tablet. The number of apps for Android appears in the hundreds. Neither HP nor Research In Motion are anywhere close to the iPad when it comes to breadth and depth of tablet-specific apps.

The biggest wild card could be Amazon. Unlike Apple’s other rivals, Amazon doesn’t have an announced tablet in the market. But also unlike the others, Amazon has some of the assets needed to compete, including its own music and video storefronts as well as its own app store, not to mention the Kindle book business. The company also has a track record of knowing how to use content to subsidize hardware, something no one in the industry has really been able to successfully do in their effort to take on Apple.

The company posted a blog item earlier this week talking about one feature of the update — the ability to scale phone apps so they look better on larger screen devices, such as tablets. But even in that blog post they didn’t specifically mention Android 3.2 as the version that would bring the feature.

Anyway, AllThingsD was curious what else was inside, so we have been pestering Google for details. Here’s what we found out.

In addition to that feature, the release adds support for 7-inch tablets and — of more interest to Xoom users — improved support for SD memory cards.

It’s not the first time that one of Google’s partners has done the talking for the company with regard to this update. Indeed, the first mention of Android 3.2 came last month when Huawei announced its future MediaPad product and noted that it would ship with that version.

The news that Motorola had begun the Android 3.2 update for Xoom owners was reported earlier by CNET News.

There’s no word on when Android 3.2 might come to other tablets. As for the update that Xoom users really want — the update to 4G LTE — that’s still coming later this summer, but a Motorola representative didn’t have an update on timing.

However, as Xoom owners have noticed, that initial deadline has now come and gone, with no upgrade made available to those who have the Verizon Wireless tablet. In case they missed it (as I clearly did), Motorola noted on an earnings call that the Xoom upgrade has been pushed out just a bit.

A Verizon representative said the upgrade should be available later this summer.

Unlike software updates that can be sent over the air, the upgrade to 4G support will require Xoom owners to send in their tablets, a process that Verizon has detailed on its Web site. Users are advised to back up and then delete all personal information on the device.

“The 4G LTE upgrade process should not delete content previously stored on your Xoom,” Verizon said. “However, if the device is lost or damaged during upgrade, you will lose all data not transferred.”

Making the delay even more irksome to consumers, Verizon is now taking preorders for a different Honeycomb tablet with 4G support out of the box — the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1.

(Update, 8:10 a.m.: This story was updated to note that Motorola had previously noted that the Xoom 4G upgrade was being delayed from its original deadline.)

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110705/motorola-misses-its-june-deadline-for-offering-xoom-owners-4g-upgrade/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110630/motorola-ceo-says-phone-sales-strong-in-china/ http://allthingsd.com/20110630/motorola-ceo-says-phone-sales-strong-in-china/#comments Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:30:47 +0000 Aaron Back http://allthingsd.com/?p=93462 Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.’s smartphone sales are growing rapidly in China even though many Google Inc. services on the phones aren’t available in the country, its chief executive said.

Sanjay Jha said in an interview the mobile handset maker has been able to work with local partners to deliver functions on its phones like email and maps, which have enabled continued rapid sales. The lack of Google features may be a more significant problem for the company’s Xoom tablets, however, he said, as those features are central to the user experience in other markets.

Read the rest of this post on the original site »

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110630/motorola-ceo-says-phone-sales-strong-in-china/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110513/another-analyst-sees-apple-padding-its-huge-tablet-lead/ http://allthingsd.com/20110513/another-analyst-sees-apple-padding-its-huge-tablet-lead/#comments Fri, 13 May 2011 19:35:51 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=62962

“There’s an iPad market, and the iPad could be classified as a tablet, from a hardware-centric viewpoint. But the market for non-iPad tablets is about as big today as it was before the iPad, which isn’t nothing, but it’s close enough to nothing that Apple doesn’t need to worry about it.”

– Instapaper creator Marco Arment

Apple CEO Steve Jobs says 2011 will be the year of the iPad and he may well be right. Despite the dizzying array of tablets announced at CES earlier this year, there’s still a dearth of non-iPad iPad-class tablets. With little in the way of competition, it’s looking likely the Pad will continue to dominate the tablet market this year and next.

A data point in support of that argument: Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope today lowered his overall forecasts for the tablet industry, while raising his estimate on Apple’s share of it.

“Our iPad forecast remains unchanged, though we have lowered our non-Apple tablet unit assumptions by 2.3 million units in 2011 and 2012,” Shope explained in a note to clients. “Meanwhile, we have raised our forecast for Apple’s tablet market share to 66.4 percent in 2011 (64 percent prior) and 66.6 percent in 2012 (65 percent prior). Overall, we are expecting 57.7 million total tablets for 2011 and 78.0 million tablets for 2012, versus 60.1 million and 80.3 million previously.”

Shope’s explanation for that adjustment? An expected “downward bias” to Android tablets in 2011. Evidently, he doesn’t see devices like the Motorola Xoom and Samsung’s Galaxy Tab blowing up the tablet market anytime soon.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110513/another-analyst-sees-apple-padding-its-huge-tablet-lead/feed/ 8 http://allthingsd.com/20110502/startup-iswifter-brings-flash-games-and-more-to-the-ipad/ http://allthingsd.com/20110502/startup-iswifter-brings-flash-games-and-more-to-the-ipad/#comments Mon, 02 May 2011 11:30:30 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7116 Just because Apple doesn’t support Flash on the iPad doesn’t mean one can’t get Flash content running on the iPad.

At least it doesn’t mean that any more, thanks to a startup called iSwifter. The iPad app works by running a browsing session on its servers and streaming the results to the iPad. Skyfire has offered a similar option, but only for Flash videos and its performance had some issues.

There are a few caveats with iSwifter as well. First, for now, the iSwifter app for the iPad only works with a Wi-Fi connection, though the company demonstrated it working over 3G as well. It could also run on all manner of other devices, including Android. Though Android supports Flash, the demo I saw showed iSwifter far outpacing the Motorola Xoom, at least when connected to a strong Wi-Fi signal. Also, all your information is going through their servers, so you have to be comfortable with that.

For now, iSwifter is a free download, though users are asked to pay $2.99 from within the app if they use it more than a little. Over time, though, the company wants to make iSwifter a subscription service, given there are real, ongoing costs involved in running browsing sessions on its hardware.

So far, only one site–Hulu–is actively blocking iSwifter’s servers. The company said users could probably find away around the block, but said it has better things to do than pick a fight. Until the block, Hulu had been a popular destination for iSwifter users.

However, far and away the biggest destination for users is Facebook, because most of the games designed for the social network site don’t run on the iPad.

Although the current iPad app is centered around delivering Flash to the iPad, iSwifter’s Rajat Gupta said that company is also looking at other potential uses for the Web streaming technology, such as in the corporate and education markets.

The story also has a personal component for me. My partner, AJ, is addicted to this Flash-based Facebook game called SuperPoke Pets. Every time a new tablet comes into the house, the first question I am always asked is can it play SuperPoke Pets.

Until I learned about iSwifter, the answer had always been no. Even the Android devices that have claimed Flash support–up to and including the Xoom running Flash 10.2 beta–have all choked while trying to display AJ’s beloved penguin, Snowflake.

Although feeding and cleaning Snowflake with iSwifter isn’t super speedy, it is certainly manageable. Now, I just need an answer to AJ’s other iPad question–When will it come in colors?

Here’s a quick video with Rajat Gupta:

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110502/startup-iswifter-brings-flash-games-and-more-to-the-ipad/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110428/motorola-mobility-posts-narrower-loss-as-mobile-device-revenues-rise/ http://allthingsd.com/20110428/motorola-mobility-posts-narrower-loss-as-mobile-device-revenues-rise/#comments Thu, 28 Apr 2011 20:24:14 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=7074 Motorola Mobility, the cell phone part of the now-divided Motorola, posted a narrower loss for the first quarter as sales rose 22 percent from a year earlier.

The company’s per-share loss was 27 cents, compared with a 72 cent per-share loss a year earlier as revenue rose to $3 billion.

In a statement, CEO Sanjay Jha touted the release of the Xoom tablet and Atrix smartphone as highlights for the company’s first quarter as an independent company. “With a well-recognized brand, a strong balance sheet and industry-leading intellectual property, we have the right assets to deliver an exciting pipeline of products, continue to grow our business and further improve our financial results.”

Having bet its future on Android, though, Motorola Mobility now faces the challenge of standing out in an increasingly crowded field that includes not only heavyweights like HTC, Samsung and LG, but also challengers such as China’s Huawei. Analysts have been particularly concerned that Xoom sales may have been weak, despite Motorola’s status as being the first out of the gate with a Honeycomb-based tablet.

Jha had warned this quarter could be particularly tough as Verizon began shipping an iPhone, potentially shifting attention away from other products, such as Motorola-built Droid models.

For the coming quarter, the company forecasts it will either break even or post a modest profit of up to 12 cents per share, before charges.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110428/motorola-mobility-posts-narrower-loss-as-mobile-device-revenues-rise/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110425/sony-jumps-on-the-honeycomb-bandwagon-plans-two-android-tablets-for-fall/ http://allthingsd.com/20110425/sony-jumps-on-the-honeycomb-bandwagon-plans-two-android-tablets-for-fall/#comments Tue, 26 Apr 2011 05:14:05 +0000 Ina Fried http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/?p=6894

Sony became the latest computer maker to toss its hat into the Android tablet ring, announcing plans for two models during a press conference in Japan.

The Japanese computer maker announced plans for two Honeycomb tablets–the 9.4-inch S1 and the S2, with its dual 5.5-inch screens. Sony said the tablets will be available globally starting this fall.

With the move, Sony will join a crowded field that includes Motorola, which led the Honeycomb parade with its Xoom, along with LG, HTC, Samsung, Toshiba and Acer, to name just some of those with announced plans. Meanwhile, Apple still dominates the field with the iPad, while HP and Research In Motion hope to tackle the tablet market with homegrown operating systems.

Both Sony models have built-in Wi-Fi as well as cellular options. In addition to the standard Web-browsing and other Android features, Sony is touting its tablets’ abilities to act as universal remote controls and connect to video and gaming services from the company.

The dual screens on the S2 allow users to combine both displays or use one for content and another for either controls or a virtual keyboard.

The company had been widely expected to cast its tablet fortunes with Android, following in the footsteps of its Sony Ericsson cellphone joint venture, which has bet on the Google operating system to power its smartphones.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110425/sony-jumps-on-the-honeycomb-bandwagon-plans-two-android-tablets-for-fall/feed/ 0 http://allthingsd.com/20110425/xoom-sales-estimate-at-best-a-dud-at-worst-a-bomb/ http://allthingsd.com/20110425/xoom-sales-estimate-at-best-a-dud-at-worst-a-bomb/#comments Mon, 25 Apr 2011 21:35:05 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=61077 Discouraging news for Motorola Mobility. The company’s Xoom tablet–the first comparable competitor to Apple’s iPad–continues to struggle with weak demand. So much so that the “disappointing” sales that analysts warned of back in March may end up being worse than feared.

Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdry estimates that Motorola Mobility has manufactured between 500,000 and 800,000 Xooms, but has sold only 5 to 15 percent of them.

Best case scenario then, according to Chowdry, is that Motorola has sold 120,000 Xooms; worse case scenario, it’s sold just 25,000. Now, admittedly, that’s a very large range, and one could argue that it makes Chowdry’s estimate largely meaningless. But remember that original forecasts suggested Motorola would sell between 3 and 5 million Xooms this year and earlier this month some analysts were calling for first quarter sales of 300,000.

In other words, even Chowdry’s best case scenario is a worst case scenario. It’s just a bit less ugly.

Whatever the actual figure, it apparently wasn’t enough to make an impression in the latest tallies of the Android army. Asked to break out Android tablet sales during Google’s recent earnings call, Jeffrey Huber, the company’s Senior Vice President of Engineering, proffered this non-answer:

Yes. So on Android, as mentioned, over 350,000 devices a day are being activated, which is just tremendous growth. In terms of breaking out share by device or by market, we don’t break out share by device. If you just look though at where the distribution relationships and partnerships are, obviously, we’ve got a great presence in the U.S., strong partners in Europe, Japan, Korea. So international is really growing as a component of the overall pie. In terms of phones versus tablets, Android is relatively early on with tablets. So we have the Honeycomb operating system now, which is developed specifically for the devices. We’ve got some great initial devices like the Motorola XOOM. But as I mentioned earlier in one of the questions, we’re seeing just a tremendous amount of innovation in the markets, but I think you’re going to see a lot more great Android tablet devices soon.

Sounds like a euphemism for “it’s almost all phones,” doesn’t it?

Motorola Mobility reports earnings on Thursday.

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110425/xoom-sales-estimate-at-best-a-dud-at-worst-a-bomb/feed/ 37 http://allthingsd.com/20110422/first-day-playbook-sales-50000-is-an-awfully-big-number/ http://allthingsd.com/20110422/first-day-playbook-sales-50000-is-an-awfully-big-number/#comments Fri, 22 Apr 2011 11:30:31 +0000 John Paczkowski http://digitaldaily.allthingsd.com/?p=60982 The launch of Research in Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook earlier this week may not have been quite the spectacle for which the company had hoped, but first day sales appear to have been respectable, just the same.

Jeffries analyst Peter Misek figures RIM sold about 45,000 PlayBooks Tuesday, with pre-orders accounting for about 25,000 of the total. RBC* analyst Mike Abramsky’s first day sales estimate is in the same range, but a bit higher: 50,000, including pre-sales.

“The launch appears to have been stronger than the launch of Motorola’s Xoom Tablet, or the Samsung Galaxy Tab, although it’s too early to judge sustainability,” he said in a note to clients, adding that, as of Wednesday, checks of 180 stores across 10 cities in the United States and Canada show rising PlayBook stockouts.

But some analysts I’ve spoken with feel those estimates are overly bullish, given the device’s limited availability. 50,000 sold seems an awfully big number when even the Broadway Staples store in downtown New York City had just 10 PlayBooks on hand at launch and a clerk at the Bay Area Best Buy I called described inventory as “a handful.”

“Those 50K estimates are likely a bit high, although there was reasonable demand at stores that actually had product,” said one analyst who declined to be named. “It definitely seemed more of a beta launch to me. A lot of the distribution partners didn’t have the product in stock yet, and there has been essentially no advertising.”

*Barbara Stymiest, Chief Operating Officer at RBC Financial Group, sits on RIM’s board of directors. RBC also makes a market in RIMM securities.

PREVIOUSLY:

• PlayBook Launch Strategy Revealed: Delayed Gratification!
• In Toronto, PlayBook Line Stretches…Wait, Do Two People Count as a Line?
• BlackBerry PlayBook: Fail With Consumers, Fail With Enterprise
• Research in Demotion: Critical PlayBook Reviews Weigh on RIM

]]> http://allthingsd.com/20110422/first-day-playbook-sales-50000-is-an-awfully-big-number/feed/ 43 http://allthingsd.com/20110420/playbook-gets-mixed-support-from-carriers/ http://allthingsd.com/20110420/playbook-gets-mixed-support-from-carriers/#comments Wed, 20 Apr 2011 22:29:18 +0000 Roger Cheng and Stuart Weinberg http://voices.allthingsd.com/?p=39178 BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd.’s new PlayBook tablet is running into hurdles right out of the gate, as Verizon Wireless says it hasn’t decided whether to carry the device and AT&T Inc. acknowledges it isn’t yet supporting a wireless linkup needed to get email on the tablet.

The stumbles with the two largest U.S. wireless carriers are the latest challenge for RIM and the PlayBook, which launched Tuesday to mixed reviews and criticism that the tablet was rushed to market. RIM needs a successful product to get back in the tablet race and ease concerns about the ground it is losing in the tough market for mobile devices.

The initial version of the PlayBook, unlike Apple Inc.’s iPad and Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc.’s Xoom, doesn’t offer cellular service. RIM is selling the tablet through retailers including Best Buy Co., Office Depot and OfficeMax Inc.

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