440,000 Xoom vs 9.25 Million iPad & iPad 2 Tablets: It’s Not a Contest But a Massacre

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Just earlier we found out that one of the most interesting Android devices scheduled to hit Verizon stores this year has been further delayed to September but the Droid Bionic’s release date is not the only interesting thing revealed by Moto during its earnings call that just ended.

We have already told you that Motorla lost $56 million in the quarter ending in June, but we’re going to elaborate on one important product in Motorola’s lineup, the Motorola Xoom.

The tablet was announced at CES 2011, where we first took it for a spin, after a somewhat successful teaser campaign filled with hits at Apple’s iPad. Then at MWC 2011 we were actually able to play with a functional unit and later when it was launched we reviewed it for you. But the Xoom never took off like the iPad did a year before it, despite being, at the time, the best iPad competitor out there.

A combination of factors are to blame for the Xoom’s poor performance. The main one is the arrival of the iPad 2, which, combined with the relative youth of Honeycomb, and its limited apps collection at launch, not to mention the high price tag of the Xoom, when compared to the price of the iPad (although specs-wise the Xoom clearly beats the iPad 2) but also to the prices of other rival Android tablets, gave Apple the expected lead in both mind and market share when it comes to this reinvented tablet business.

Today Motorola said it sold 440,000 tablets during the last quarter. That’s over 21 times less than what Apple sold in the same period. Apple cashed in big time on those 9.25 million iPad and iPad 2 units sold (and I’m sure most of those sales are actually iPad 2 sales) while Motorola trailed back, incapable of responding properly.

We’ve seen Honeycomb updates, free LTE upgrade promises and slashed prices but the Motorola Xoom had been forgotten in favor of the newer, more iPad 2-like Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1; with the iPad 2 still being the overall best-seller. Not to mention that at some point even the BlackBerry PlayBook was said to have performed better than the Xoom during the opening weekend.

Like I said in the title, it’s not a contest anymore, but a massacre, which shows us that Motorola has to already start thinking about launching a serious Xoom 2 device to fight Apple’s tablets, and everyone else in the tablet business. I’ll still hand it to Motorola for having the balls of putting its tablet sales figures out there. Unlike a certain Ballmer-run operation I know, which, to this day, will not acknowledge the total number of Windows Phone 7 units sold by its partners to date.