Motorola’s Android 3 tablet, the Xoom, will be shipping sometime later this year, and Motorola has high hopes for it. It has ordered as many as 800,000 units from its suppliers in Taiwan, and may even raise its expectations to a million sold in the first quarter of 2011.
That’s a pretty cheery outlook, considering there is no shortage of competition. T-Mobile’s G-Slate, Acer and other PC makers’ offerings, HP’s webOS slate, and of course the iPad 2 all make for a pretty crowded market. But if volume is big enough (say, total 10-12 million tablets sold in 2011), that leaves plenty of room for the frontrunners. And Motorola has the advantage of being the most recognizable Android hardware maker on the block. A little Droid branding might not have gone amiss, but we may see that later.
There’s no release date yet for the Xoom, but personally I’d guess March. They can’t afford any later.
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