Motorola Xoom, an Android tablet computer in competition with Apple’s iPad, is set to be launched in South Africa during April 2011, a Motorola spokesperson said today.<\/p>\n
The device was announced at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January 2011 where it was crowned best gadget of the show.<\/p>\n
It runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb on an Nvidia Tegra 2 1Ghz dual-core processor and has 1GB DDR2 RAM and 32GB on-board storage.<\/p>\n
Honeycomb is the first version of Google’s mobile operating system (OS) designed with tablets in mind, and the Xoom was the first tablet launched that runs the new operating system.<\/p>\n
Motorola’s answer to the iPad also features a 5 mega-pixel (MP) rear-facing camera capable of recording 720p video, a 2MP forward-facing camera, and HDMI output.<\/p>\n
The Motorola Xoom went on sale in the United States<\/a> in February 2011 at US$800 for the model that runs on mobile networks and US$600 for the Wi-Fi only model.<\/p>\n This compared favourably against the original iPad, whose 32GB Wi-Fi only version also retailed for US$599. The Xoom capable of connecting to Verizon’s mobile network sold for just less than the top-of-the-range 64GB iPad which was priced at US$829.<\/p>\n Last week, just a few days after the announcement of the iPad 2, it is reported that a US retailer dropped the price of the Wi-Fi only Motorola Xoom<\/a> to US$539.<\/p>\n No pricing for South Africa is available just yet, but the spokesperson for Motorola said that they’re planning on launching the device across all cellular networks at competitive prices.<\/p>\n The Motorola Xoom also has two docks, one normal charging dock and one charging dock with speakers, as well as a portfolio case as accessories.<\/p>\n According the Motorola spokesperson it isn’t confirmed whether the accessories would be brought to SA or what they would cost.<\/p>\n As South Africa usually forms part of the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) region, prices in countries such as the UK are often indicative of what to expect locally.<\/p>\n Carphone Warhouse in the UK have the Motorola Xoom on sale in-line with iPad pricing and one would expect that for the Xoom to be competitive in South Africa it would have to compete with Apple’s popular tablet price-wise as well.<\/p>\n Motorola Xoom slated for SA launch in April<\/strong><\/a> << Comments and views<\/p>\n