xoom

So here's an Angelina Jolie look-alike clutching what just might be a Xoom 2 look-alike.

At least that's the impression some wise commenters on YouTube seem to have obtained from a new ad posted yesterday by Verizon.

This, for some, might be cause for excitement. The original Xoom was slightly expensive and didn't seem to offer quite the same creature comforts as the iPad--especially if the creature happened to be human.

Moreover, it was launched with advertising that laid a hefty dollop of nonsense onto an unsuspecting Super Bowl audience. Perhaps you remember it. It was the … Read more

Amazon is prepping a new 10-inch color Kindle tablet that would support streaming video and sell for around $399, according to a report recently released by investment firm Detwiler Fenton.

Code-named Hollywood, the new Kindle tablet would include a promotional video service with Amazon reportedly offering the same movie service that it now offers for free to its Prime customers. The service would be free to Hollywood buyers for a certain amount of time, according to Detwiler Fenton.

The new Kindle would be powered by a more robust processor than is found in the smaller Kindle e-book readers and is expected to debut in time for the holiday season.

E-book readers and rival tablets alike have faced strong competition from the iPad, but Detwiler Fenton said it believes Hollywood's $399 price tag should be low enough to give it some traction against the iPad. This could put pressure on more expensive tablets, such as Motorola's Xoom and RIM's BlackBerry Playbook, each of which is expected to sell around 1 million units this year, said the investment firm.

It comes as no secret that Amazon has reportedly been busy readying its own lineup of tablets, according to various sources and some hints from CEO Jeff Bezos. One of the reports refers to "Hollywood" as the code name for a new 10-inch tablet from Amazon, to be powered by Nvidia's quad-core Kal-El chipset.… Read more

This week, a Dell executive threw cold water on an already-lukewarm Android tablet market in the U.S., and his comments echo recent sniping by Nvidia's CEO about the launch of the Motorola Xoom.

Though Apple has sold 25 million iPads to date--many of those in the U.S.--Android tablet makers like Motorola and Samsung are selling a fraction of that. Motorola said it has shipped 250,000 Xoom tablets. Samsung has fared a bit better, with just under 1 million out the door in the first quarter, according to DisplaySearch.

Samsung's relatively robust number includes a … Read more

Hewlett-Packard's TouchPad tablet will do Flash video right out of the gate--just in case anyone had any doubts--according to an HP executive who was demonstrating the TouchPad at a Qualcomm conference this week.

The HP WebOS-based TouchPad, due out soon, was front and center at the Qualcomm Uplinq conference in San Diego. Jon Rubinstein, senior vice president at HP's Palm Global Business Unit, spent much of a one-hour keynote address flourishing the TouchPad and talking about its virtues.

One of those virtues is the ability to "run multiple applications at once without slowing down. Multiple screens open … Read more

Facing unrelenting competition from Apple's iPad, many rival tablet makers will build fewer tablets than originally planned, according to a J.P. Morgan analyst.

In a research note released yesterday, analyst Mark Moskowitz said that non-Apple tablet makers have gotten an early "dose of reality" by failing to produce a high-volume tablet that comes close to matching the demand for the iPad.

As a result of the "weak showing" of products such as Motorola's Xoom, Research In Motion's PlayBook, and Samsung's Galaxy Tab, many tablet makers have cut back on their plans … Read more

Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet will come out of the box with the latest version of Android Honeycomb 3.1.

A Wi-Fi-only edition of Galaxy Tab 10.1 is due to hit the consumer market on June 8. The 16GB version is expected to cost $499, while the 32GB version will run $599.

As the first upgrade to Honeycomb, Android 3.1 offers several fixes and well as improvements to the browser, Gmail, and other features. Nvidia's outspoken CEO Jen-Hsun Huang, who has criticized earlier versions of Android--even pointing to certain shortcomings in Honeycomb 3.0--has … Read more

Led by the iPad, the tablet market has taken off with a bang, but even with all the hoopla, less than 5 percent of U.S. consumers polled by Nielsen actually own one.

Tablets represent a huge potential money maker for the industry based on what consumers will pay not just for the device but all the content they need and want. Yet Nielsen's data, presented at the paidContent Mobile conference this week, shows that it's a market with considerable room to grow.

Adoption of tablets has risen over the past year to 4.8 percent in this … Read more

When Google announced Android 3.1 Honeycomb was coming to the Xoom last week, I was pretty excited. Honeycomb's already a great tablet OS, so any improvements could only add to its functionality and efficiency. Unfortunately the version 3.1 update was released over the air and was rolled out in spurts. Our Xoom didn't receive its update until earlier this week. Google detailed changes to expect, but I wanted to check and see just how well some of them were implemented.

Browser Aside from a few annoyances, I thought the Chrome browser in Honeycomb 3.0.1 … Read more

Apple's mobile products seem to be so popular that even older models are outselling the competition, according to reports from investment firm Canaccord Genuity.

In a series of research notes sent to investors earler this week, technology analyst Michael Walkley shared his findings on how Apple fared in the mobile retail market in April. The analyst confirmed that the iPhone 4 was the top-selling smartphone at both AT&T and Verizon last month, while iPad 2 sales stayed strong as consumers overwhelmingly chose it in favor of rival tablets.

But thanks to discounted prices, even the iPhone 3GS and the first-generation iPad are outselling the competition, according to Walkley. Specifically, the iPhone 3GS outsold both the Motorola Atrix 4G and the HTC Inspire 4G at AT&T, while the 16GB and 32GB original iPads were sold out at Verizon less than two weeks following the debut of the iPad 2.

"Interestingly, our April checks indicated continued strong demand for the iPhone 3GS at AT&T and iPad 1 at Verizon, as these older generation products with reduced prices often outsold new Android products," wrote Walkley in his note. "We believe this highlights Apple's significant competitive advantage, and these older products help Apple offer a tiered pricing strategy at key channels and the older Apple products are still very competitive versus new competitor products."… Read more