Motorola Xoom Looking Like Epic Flop
blogs.forbes.com
blogs.forbes.com
The Android team doesn't seem to give a shit. Ask anyone who has tried to support Android is an Enterprise how bad the Exchange, VPN and 802.1x stacks have been since day one. Business as usual. Their public issue tracker is obviously intended as a space for frustrated users [1] to shout into a bottomless pit of who gives a shit.
I used to be a major Android fan but screw this. If only WebOS was open source...
[1] - Edited to substitute users for customers. Real users are not Google's customers. And the experience shows.
Sure there were 'processes', like "Canary it in some cluster and watch the results for a few weeks before turning it loose on the world." but being completely vertically integrated is a unique sort of situation.
Android is much like a more traditional vendor/customer model where they are at a place in the pipeline that has to co-ordinate with other things that are in the pipeline. Except when those 'other things' are hardware it gets really strange.
I was present in meetings in which all the folks at the meeting would nod their heads at some release date which was totally and completely imaginary. It existed so that dereferencing the term 'release date' didn't return 'undefined' :-). I remember my first project there I asked SRE (part of operations) for a date when they would be done with their part. Got that date, operated my part of the project against it, the date arrived and nothing. Two days before the date I had re-confirmed it, and on the date was told, "Well its not quite ready, probably in a couple more weeks." Really? One of the reasons people do 'starter projects' there was to learn this lesson.
The 'tablet' version of Android has been a planning disaster from the moment it was conceived as far as I can tell. Why isn't ChromeOS (basically Android kernel + browser UI) not the tablet version of Android? Android/Tablet vs Android/Phone? AFAICT its because Apple pulled off making iOS work between phones and tablets, and they only pulled that off because they had the iPod Touch for YEARS before they shipped the iPad and kept asking 'what is a non-phone experience like?'
I have no inside knowledge of how the whole 3.x thing went down but if it was like other projects there, rather than get some clear thinkers together in a room and put together a plan and then manage against the risks of that plan, two or maybe three 2 or 3 person 'teams' (friends likely, in their 20% time) probably started working on their vision of how it might work as a tablet, only to be out maneuvered at a review (or not) to have several competing versions going forward which then someone checked in first and everyone else was stuck following that version until someone else checked in something better. Reasoning? Planning? Discussion amongst stakeholders? Probably not so much.
So I would certainly place the underwhelming nature of Android tablets completely at Google's doorstep. Its not like the hardware is less capable than the iPads, in some cases its even more capable.
Its not in Googles DNA (at the moment) to execute against a customer/supplier type of arrangement. Fortunately I think there are some really smart people at Google who understand that, I hope they can prevail against the inevitable corporate anti-bodies that are now doubt even now trying to marginalize them.
I do believe that Android will win here but for the same reason that lava coming out of a volcano 'wins.'
Because native apps are sometimes nice. A tablet that can't play Angry Birds is a hard sell.
Interesting comments about Google's development practices. My impression is that Honeycomb's problems stem from the fact that there was a hard deadline: they wanted to get the Xoom out before the iPad 2. If that's not how Google normally operates, that would explain a lot.
Competing competently in the tablet market is really stretching Google's strengths as a company. I think they can do it eventually, but it's going to be a long learning process.
This.
Also, I've heard that Google developers didn't know the deadline until after the Andy Rubin demo (which was a few month before launch)
Their support has been atrocious, it generally takes 2-3 weeks for a response. When I do get a response they ask for a screenshot despite the fact I've given them the error message verbatim, with error code.
I had to buy x-code4 through the app store because this issue is going on 3 months- still waiting on a refund.
This isn't meant to be an apple bashing post. I'm pissed about these issues, but I don't think it's because Apple doesn't care. I think it's because they are trying to cope with enormous amounts of support tickets and are probably having trouble hiring qualified people to address them. I'm guessing that Google is experiencing a similar problem x10. There's a market demand to get these products out asap, but the infrastructure just isn't ready yet.
Nope: http://gregisdumb.com/2011/02/24/verizon-motorola-xoom-no-lo.... Not even Verizon could get away with screwing their customers that blatantly.
They cost about the same.
Google controls Android 3.0 completely. They very intentionally did not make a source release. Google entered the relationship with Motorola and it damn well had control over who was going to ship a 3.0 device. They knew what they were doing. They HAD to beat the iPad 2 release date at all costs.
So now all we have is a buggy as hell 3.0 OS with no source release and we're still waiting for them to fix stuff. I hope the early release to beat the iPad furthered some other business goal because it didn't further Android as a great Tablet OS.
The flaws I've seen in the device are clear OS and Software issues. So unless your point of view is that it's up to other people to fix Google's fuckups... eh...
I doubt they had to. They chose to, and blundered with the entire world looking at them.
If I were Moto, I would have red-lighted the project some months before deadline, when it was readily apparent that Google wasn't going to deliver a quality stable release on-time.
Competing with the iPhone (and it's carrier exclusivities and high ASP) is one thing, but if you have shoddy product, the iPad is going to wipe the floor with you unless you really offer something unique (ie, eee transformer looks interesting).
Fair enough. Motorola definitely shares blame.
But at the end of the day all that is Android ends at Google's feet. Why play games with holding back the 3.0 source if you don't at least feel you have some responsibility for how Android launches on tablets?
The device has both logos on the back, and they're the same size.
How are you actually arguing with this point? Is it just because this is the internet and fingertips are a renewable resource?
To their credit Google recognized they messed up and are exerting more control but there is no question they share a lot of the blame on the software side here.
Motorola on the other hand messed up with pricing and the late introduction of the wifi only model but I suppose they felt confident after a good showing in CES and good reveiws.
Motorola also got some good exposure and definitely some experience in channels that will be critical in the future.
Apparently, it’s a software issue, but the SD card doesn't work at all. However, this isn’t a Google issue, as other Honeycomb tablets have working SD card slots.
Honeycomb is like taking the worst Linux WM you can find and sticking it onto a tablet with no thought for how a tablet should work. This is going to appeal to some Android fans, but that's about it.
Everything on this device is horrible. The device feels chunky and heavy, the screen looks dithered (you can see individual pixels) and unevenly lit, and you can see UI element flicker into place. And there are about 2 or 3 tablet specific apps that are actually tablet apps in the Market (Angry Birds, and some other poor quality Android games). ClockOS even lives on, with a dedicated clock on the home screen, and the bottom right corner, and there's even a 'Clock' app. Fantastic.
Oh, it also doesn't charge via USB. WTF?
Anyway, it has one thing going for it: it has Angry Birds and it works more or less like the iPad version of Angry Birds. That's about it.
The pixel density may be higher than the iPad, but the screen quality is nowhere near it.
And the device is that bad. What's with the system tray? And the Windows Vista style app switcher? It's like we've gone back in time to when Windows 95 was cool (and Honeycomb has a UI that is less consistent than Windows 95), except with tappable UI widgets.
Maybe 4.0 will fix it all (ala how 2.0 brought Android into the 'usable' category), but this is not a tablet for anyone but nerds.
'64 tablet specific apps' is being generous. Maybe the people developing these apps upped targetSdk and stuck in a poorly-recreated-fragment-API-using-thing-aka-UISplitViewController widget, but that's pretty much it.
The rest are games that are available on iPad.
I've not played with a Xoom, but it keeps striking me that all of the people launching Android tablets are totally the wrong people to be doing it. Apple has (at least) the following things going for it:
1) It gets great deals on components and manufacturing 2) It maintains very consistent retail pricing 3) It does a lot of retail itself 4) It gets 30% off the top of all app purchases on the device 5) It gets ?% off the top of all music/movie purchases on the device
Points 1-3 are good for initial profit margins. It means they're making decent money on every iPad sold. Points 4 and 5 are good for ARPU (average revenue per user) - it means you're continuing to make money from every device sale, long into the future.
Now look at the Xoom or the Galaxy Tab or any other android tablet currently available or announced and think very hard about which of the above points apply. I think you'd struggle to apply anything other than point 1 and even that probably only applies to Samsung. Most of the vendors do small manufacturing runs, sell them wholesale to retailers and get no money from end users until it's time for new hardware. The only exception to this I can think of would be revenue sharing deals from the mobile networks on the 3G models. I don't know what kind of deals these would be, but my guess is that the networks would demand pretty cheap unit prices on the hardware.
So who could do better? The obvious answer is Amazon, they could at least get points 3, 4 and 5 (and 3 strongly suggests they'd also get point 2) and what are they doing? Running an Android app store right now. If they can make a good tablet (and the Kindle hardware suggests they should be able to), they could really make a splash with it, and that would help them improve on point 1. Sony might be able to, in that they could arrange point 5 and potentially 1 and 2, but my general view on Sony's ability to execute in the 'digital lifestyle' arena is very very negative ;)
Alternatively perhaps Samsung's desire to copy Apple's hardware will translate into a desire to copy their services. If they could get deals on content then they could get points 4 and 5 and differentiate themselves from the Android crowd.
That's my take on part of the tablet world. I also think Android badly needs some really slick tablet apps - on a par with iMovie and GarageBand, both of which are stunningly good.
The reasons that their products are successful beyond that are even more important, IMO. Unlike Motorola, Samsung, Google, Nokia, and so many other companies in this space, Apple has been working very hard on designing interfaces for applications and personal computer operating systems for a very long time. When you put Apple with their experience with OS X and Mac software up against Motorola, even with Google's help, it's clear who has the advantage.
There's not really another company with Apple's sort of experience out there, other than Microsoft. The problem is their mobile strategy is a mess still, and they don't seem the same quality of vision that Apple does.
This has been bothering me for a bit in the "android takes the market share" reporting. It totally misses the point that Apple makes a ton of money off it's bit of the market but the android segment is full of lots of companies making low margins and not really doing that well.
Amazon is, on paper, brilliantly situated to do something really good in this space (including a fork of Android of their own perhaps - no idea if the licensing would allow that)
If the Xoom turns out to be unsuccessful, there's no shortage of possible explanations as to why that was the case. At this point, I think we need to either have a successful non-iPad tablet, or a longer period without a successful non-iPad to make any kind of useful analysis.
If another Android tablet launches and is successful, than that may tell us something about what Motorola did wrong here. If the Playbook becomes successful, that might also tell us something, but again, these would be things specific to Motorola's product.
The only meaningful conclusion that this seems to suggest is that just launching a tablet doesn't guarantee success (which shouldn't be a surprise, as that's been the status quo for the past decade at least).
I am particularly intrigued by the Asus device, as it has a keyboard accessory that effectively turns the tablet into a netbook. For me, this type of versatility can have real value. Unfortunately, Asus has not done a very good job of supplying enough devices to meet the demand.
Unfortunately the keyboard docking station is largely vaporware here in the USA -- reviewers got them but I don't believe a single unit has sold at retail here. It is somewhat puzzling why the docks are even more scarce than the tablets since the dock is a relatively straightforward piece of electronics compared to tablet itself.
But whatever, the Xoom is one devices, like the HTC Dream, this isn't a big deal in the Android big picture.
However, compared to iPad 2, it has no significant hardware advantage. Maybe the screen aspect ratio for some people. It has no price advantage. The OS is still beta quality. For all but the small number of people who want a tablet without the restrictions of the Apple Store and who aren't willing to jailbreak an iPad 2, there is simply no reason to buy a Xoom.
Unless Motorola are idiots, they HAD to have predicted that there would be an iPad 2 and that it would be announced about a year after iPad 1. So unless the plan was for the Xoom to come out long before that and the schedule slipped, I don't understand what their plan was.
I'm aware of the difference between "shipped" and "sold", but the figures in the Forbes article should be taken with a grain of salt.
You can ship all the units you want, but unless people are taking them home, the number is definitely not a good proxy for sales.
I guess SF is a fairly large outlier when it comes to tech products though.
Personally I'm very happy with mine; the browser is definitely rather buggy right now but that's it - apart from that the software is great.
1. at amazon.com, the only site I have been tracking the tablets in actual sales, the Xoom is either #1 or #2 in tablet sales over the past two months. I mean, it is ahead of even the iPad 2 that is supposed to supply constrained. So all the guys who stood in line and brought iPad2's so they could sell for a markup -- finding it difficult to sell even for a $100 premium -- compared to the flop show that is the Xoom. http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1232597011/... (this keeps changing, so don't hold me to it).
2. the wifi model is flying off the shelf at some of the local retailers. did someone earlier mention out of stock situation in Canada?
3. the wifi was introducted on Mar 26th, a couple of days before their quarter ended
4. more channels and price points are yet to be introduced.
2. I have yet to see one in Canada, but I'm not really looking. However, it's certainly possible that people are always out of stock because they're only ordering 1 - 3 of them and there's definitely people out there who will buy things because they're not from Apple.
3. Granted.
4. If they're having problems with the channels and price points they have already, they're not likely to do much better outside. Motorola's built on the mobile phone channel. Building up a channel outside of your niche is hard.
Amazon itself doesn't sell the iPad. It is only sold through Amazon via 3rd party merchants for a huge markup. Obviously sales are going to be low on Amazon when the cheapest price is $130 over the price in the Apple Store or other authorized resellers like macconnection.com.
It's amazing that the iPad is on Amazon's best seller list at all, since it doesn't make any financial sense to buy an iPad on Amazon.
Because that is the default, conservative position to take. The null hypothesis, if you will.