I assume Motorola knowsMotorola may just now be finding out. They know how many they've shipped to Verizon, Best Buy, etc., but the larger that number is, the more likely it is that the resellers have a contractual right to send them back if consumers don't buy them.
I'm dubious about the methodology of that Deutsche Bank memo that said "100,000", so if this esimate is just another re-run of the Deutsche Bank article, it's pretty ho-hum. If this is a second guy who came at the problem from a different direction and also got "around 100,000" I'd start worrying for Motorola.
It may sound incredibly unlikely to people that sales could be this bad for Motorola when iPads are flying off the shelves, but that is exactly what many computer companies experienced in the early days of the IBM PC. Sometimes one product from one company so captures the public's imagination that well-known and substantial vendors are treated as if their products didn't exist. I'm not saying that's what is happening here, but it might be.
Numbers, numbers, numbers. One of the first things I do in the morning is scan through all my incoming feeds looking for numbers. And this morning an interesting set of numbers caught my eye.
Analyst: 25,000 to 120,000 Xooms sold. Motorola’s survival at risk
The numbers are courtesy of Global Equities’ analyst Trip Chowdry.
The first thing that struck me about these particular numbers was the broad range - 25,000 to 120,000. A range that itself is an order of magnitude sounds more to me like a guess than an estimate. There’s no data to back up this ‘estimate,’ and no indication given as to how the numbers were arrived at.
Note: From my RSS feed it seems that Elmer-DeWitt had originally posted a range of 15,000 to 120,000 before later changing the headline.
OK, so first off, do these numbers represent reality? Simple answer is that I don’t know. I assume Motorola knows, but at present no one from Motorola is talking numbers.
In that case, do the numbers matter? After all, if you take a trip over to Amazon.com you find that the Xoom is ranked #1 bestseller for ‘Tablets,’ #2 bestseller for ‘Computers & Accessories’ and has the #2 spot rating for tablets with 4.2 stars (current #1 is the Asus Eee Slate).
So, can a product occupy good positions on the sales rankings over on Amazon and still have tanked? Well, again, that’s possible. When most people think of tablets they are thinking about the iPad, which has captured a massive share of the market, so everyone else with a tablet is left scrabbling around for tidbits.
I don’t think that we have enough information to say that Xoom has tanked, but that said, I don’t think that sales have been stellar either. Being #1 on Amazon doesn’t make you #1 overall. And I don’t see a single tablet on the horizon (no, not even Sony’s latest offerings) presenting a threat to the iPad.
One thing’s for sure, Xoom is no iPad killer.
