Motorola Xoom Faces More Poor Sales Reports

The Motorola Xoom, one of the main contenders against the prevailing tablet heavyweight, the Apple iPad 2, has been hit once again by poor sales reports.

The outlook for Motorola Mobility’s Xoom tablet is particularly bleak, according to Global Equities analyst Trip Chowdry. Chowdry said the first Android 3.0 “Honeycomb” tablet sold somewhere between 5 percent to 15 percent of the 500,000 to 800,000 units manufactured.

Chowdry, who surveyed 6 Costco stores, 5 Verizon stores, 5 Best Buy stores and 3 Staples stores, to reach his conclusions, puts Xoom sales somewhere between 25,000 and 120,000 units. Compared to the iPad’s monster sales, this could be considered a failure to compete.

Verizon Disagrees

Motorola, which is in its quiet period until it announces first quarter earnings 28 April, declined to comment to eWEEK for this story. Verizon Wireless, which released its earnings last week, took a different view.

Verizon spokesperson Brenda Raney declined to confirm or deny Chowdry’s estimates, but told eWEEK 26 April: “We are very pleased with the sales of Xoom. It continues to be a popular item.”

That doesn’t sound like the failure Chowdry is making the Xoom out to be, but positive public relations will often prevail.

Chowdry also declared Honeycomb, which is being deployed on more than a dozen tablets this year, “dead on arrival.” He said a survey of 150 developers indicated that Honeycomb is incomplete, sporting an incomplete features set, incomplete developer tools, poor user interface, unstable software, and poor design.

Chowdry had declared similar findings back in March, calling the UI complicated and confusing. On balance, the 10.1-inch Xoom not only performed well in tests by eWEEK, but measured favourable to the iPad 2 in side-by-side comparisons eWEEK conducted. The Xoom is fast and certainly more graphically pleasing than the iPad 2.

Developer Disaster

The analyst also called Google’s Android Market a “disaster,” with developers unable to make money from their applications.

The Android Market needs a lot of work but it’s hardly a disaster and is improving all of the time. Google just added merchant sales reports to the store to show developers their earnings in a dashboard.

Ultimately, Chowdry said Motorola may want to rethink putting all of its eggs in Android’s basket, and to wield its 16,000 mobile-centric patents as a deterrent versus other Android smartphone rivals that seek to undercut it on price.

“Carriers prefer to push Google Android phones from HTC, Kyocera, LG over Motorola Android Phones, as carriers make more money on the Android phones from HTC, Kyocera, LG, etc.,” Chowdry reported.