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1. More people, I think, are likely to buy an iPad from Apple.com rather than Amazon.com, so the fact that Xoom is higher-rated than iPad there doesn't mean much. IMO.

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.

>> 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

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.

> But why take the pessimistic view that all the shipped tablets are on the shelf when you don't have any information.

Because that is the default, conservative position to take. The null hypothesis, if you will.