Some tablet makers can't take a hint.
Motorola Mobility
The teaser hints at the unveiling for something that will be faster, thinner, smarter, and stronger. It could be the rollout of a new Droid smartphone, but we're probably looking at a beefed-up Xoom tablet. Given the pitch, didn't Motorola learn its lesson earlier this year? No one is going to win the tablet wars on spec sheets alone.
The Xoom certainly seemed promising when it hit the market last year. It was the first device introduced with Google's
It also didn't help that the iPad 2 closed the gap on the original's camera shortcomings.
Has any tablet maker been able to make a dent in Apple's market dominance? It should certainly seem possible, since Android smartphones are outselling iPhones. The problem is that the big-name tablet makers have tried to win this battle on features -- to the point where it prices them out of contention.
If there's any tablet that has a shot at Apple this year, it's Amazon.com's
After all, the only time that non-iPad manufacturers appear to gain any kind of sales traction is when they have "going out of business" fire sales -- like Hewlett-Packard's
So good luck with "faster, thinner, smarter, and stronger," Motorola and Verizon. Unless you also plan to add "cheaper" and "humbler" into the mix, don't wake me up next Tuesday.
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