Motorola Xoom Android tablet tipped for mid-Feb release

The much-anticipated release of Motorola’s Android tablet PC is now expected to happen in the US on February 17th.

An American or a worldwide release date has yet to be officially confirmed but internal info from the Best Buy retailer appears to have the Xoom slated for availability from the middle of next month.

Engadget received the info from unnamed sources and suggest it to be a strongest indication yet that Motorola is to release the first of its Android-operated tablet PCs within a matter of weeks.

Android tablet PCs have been on offer for a while, with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab the most prominent so far but interest in the Xoom has been intensifying since it was teased ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show and subsequently showcased with a Honeycomb version of Google’s operating system.

Pricing is naturally a key concern for anyone weighing up their tablet PC options and it is believed that the cost of buying a Xoom on its release in the US will be just shy of $700.

Motorola will do well to attract enough buyers of its Xoom to threaten the current tablet market dominance of the Apple iPad and to fend of competition from rival firms with Android operated slates up their sleeves as well.

However, there is widely reckoned to be plenty of room for growth in the mobile computing sector worldwide at present, with the financial services company Deloitte having recently predicted that ten million tablets will be sold to the enterprise sector alone over the course of this year, with iPads very much leading the way.

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