Motorola explains the 800 USD Xoom pricing

Many people who were dead set on grabbing the Motorola Xoom the second it landed on Verizonshelves may have gone back on their decision when they heard that it will cost $800 at launch. The terribly sexy and expensive tablet may have what it takes to take the crown as the best Android Honeycomb tablet, but the price just might not sit right with everyone. Well, Sanjay Jha decided to go on the record and explain the pricing of the tablet.

Apparently, the extra cost is due to the fact that you can upgrade the Xoom to give it 4G capabilities.

"We felt that our ability to deliver 50Mb/s would justify the $799 price point. It is 32GB with 3G and a free upgrade to 4G. Being competitive with iPad is important. We feel that from the hardware and capabilities we deliver we are at least competitive and in a number of ways better [than the iPad]."

 

Jha response does make some sense you basically gotta pay to play but I seriously doubt a majority of users will be seeing 50Mbps in real life situations.

For a company who prides themselves on offering choices, we are surprised that the Xoom doesn ot come with a non-4G LTE option to help make the price tag easier to swallow. The price point tells me that you have already paid the 4G module up front, and the actual installation of it will be free. Hopefully the rumor of Verizon keeping their LTE data plans the same as the 3G plans remains intact, because if it does not it would just be an extra fee to fully utilize your device.