Personally, I'd rather see American companies invest in American infrastructure rather than engage companies in other countries with questionable labor practices and with parasitic monetary policies.

But it's hard to blame any company for doing so. Companies are amoral. Our government should be doing something about it.

But it's worth pointing out that if Apple (or any other company; I'm sure Apple's likely at the top of the heap, especially since we don't hear these statistics from anyone else) employed American factory workers, 68% of whom were required to work 61-hour, 7-day workweeks, they would be sued into oblivion. As it is, it's just another statistic.

Obviously, the companies that conduct due diligence to investigate these abuses and right the wrongs that take place deserve some credit. But with labor standards in China being what they are, things like this will continue to happen, and when one country cracks down, the factories will just move somewhere else with laxer labor regulation.

Of course, I would have given Apple a bit more credit if they'd come out with this sort of information before the Foxconn incidents, or if they were more open about what other foreign companies are doing their manufacturing. In the end, I reckon they're no better or worse than other electronics makers, but more transparency would go a long way to improve their image on these matters.

I have no suggestion nor do I think there will ever be a solution, patches yes, solution no. As long as there is poverty stricken part of the world the more wealthy populous will take advantage of them by supplying the consumer with cheap products and companies cheap labor.

Very few people care, or want to know, how their $200 notebook got manufactured they are just happy it’s not $400. The companies also don’t give a rat’s ass as long as they are making a profit. Then people in the USA wonder why they got laid off from the local factory while they are browsing the web on their cheap computer. I’m no exception to any of this.

I guess a poison sweat shop is better than being sold as a sex slave.

Did anyone think to ask those workers who were being so badly treated whether they thought they were "taken advantage of"? If the only alternative is to watch his children starve and his wife prostitute herself, perhaps that 61-hour work week and income an order of magnitude greater than his neighbor might be seen in a different light.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be in those circumstances (well, actually, I can imagine it) and I thank whatever gods may be that in my entire life, from age 20 to age 63, I was never unemployed for even a single day, and for only one six-month period did I have a job that I didn't enjoy. For the final 25 years of my working life I did not even take time off because I enjoyed my work more than I would have enjoyed vacationing.

But do you honestly think that these badly used (by our standards) workers would be better off if they had no work at all?

tanstaafl.

In the end, the company still employ's approximately "x" number of people -- laying off the children and replacing them with older teens gives the same level of employment, more or less.

Some people are then unemployed, and some people gain employment. Neutral outcome there, except fewer children are being exploited by this one company.

Doing nothing (head in the sand) doesn't lead to change, and without change there'll always be this issue.

Cheers

Yes, they are taking advantage of the fact they can move their facility to a poorer country and hire poor people for less money. They could pay these people better wage, have safer working conditions and benefits. But they are taking advantage of the situation.

Everyone takes advantage of everyone else in a free market system however some take the advantage to an extreme.

Poisoning and child labor are a little too far for me. But we all have different standards.

Carphone Warehouse will be getting the Xoom exclusively in the UK. No indication on pricing yet. I hate Carphone Warehouse shops. The staff at the ones I've been to have always been way more obnoxious and pushy than at other phone shops. They've also annoyingly got the exclusive to the Nexus S here as well...

Wow, that seems exceedingly dumb given that other tablets are available everywhere and in particular supermarkets, why would you purposefully restrict your chances of sales?

I avoid the carphone whorehouse like the plague, infact I avoid all phone shops because I detest the fact that within 2 seconds of entering the store you get a 16 year old trying to sell you something.

Because it is expensive and they want to make it appear cheaper by selling it with a data contract ?

My god, I've just googled the price, are they insane? You're going to have to sign up for a very long data contract in order to get a "lowish" price on it.

There's finally an official price from Motorola: $799 for 3G, $600 for WiFi only. Both of those are clearly too high.

The thing I worry about in this space is that all the other Android tablet makers seem to be dragging their heels on releasing a price for their tablet. I worry that they're waiting for the other players to make their move and then try to slightly undercut them. If Samsung releases their tablet for $550 now I wouldn't be surprised and I'd be disappointed that they were still overpriced. These guys aren't going to match the build quality of the iPad, so they have no choice but to compete on price. People will hold both in their hands and recognize that one is more valuable than the other if they're the same price.

If any of these guys can release their tablet for $400, I think they have a shot at competing. Especially if it's a 3G/4G version for that price.

Motorola says they can justify the higher prices because their devices are 4G. Ummmm...

They seriously said that? Do you have a link? I'd love to see it in their words, because that's really dumb.

That idea alone is pretty dumb, since you can be pretty sure that all the 4G phones coming out soon are going to go for the same $200 that all the others do. There's no way these phones will go for more than the starting iPhone price.

That's enough stupidity right there. But then you add on the stupidity that the Xoom won't even be 4G out of the gate. Apparently they're going to do trade-ins a few months later when the 4G models are out.

Yeah, it sounds like they have this all figured out!

Thats why people are interested in rooting the Nook Color. Reasonable hardware specs and has a capacitive touchscreen unlike the other cheap crap tablets out there.

4G? That's LTE then? Wow, that'll do you a lot of good with virtually no providers already supporting that standard... And by the time they do, we'll be at least 2-3 generations of mobile phones further.

Take a note Motorola (and Samsung for that matter): if you're copying something from another company, the copy should at least be cheaper than the original, or else everybody will continue to buy the original. (if that's not an eye-opener, I don't know what is! )

That's true, and it's been mighty tempting. Plus, for what I want I don't need too much speed.

But I've seen video of the Nook in action, and I think I just wouldn't be able to live with how slow it is. It's...fine. But I think the CPU is slower than my phone's.

Also, I think I'm done hacking a tablet to do what I want. The Archos was a terrible experience for me that way

Not quite. The Xoom is actually 3G (EVDO Rev A) at the moment but sometime in the future they'll offer a hardware upgrade to 4G LTE. They say its supposed to be free.

Probably. The CPU in the Nook Color is slower than in my Android handset.

The Nook has:

800MHz Cortex A8. 512MB RAM. 8GB internal storage. MicroSD slot. 7 inch 1024x600 LCD with capacitive touchscreen. 802.11b/g/n WiFi.

Not too bad for $249 but you're relying on hacks to make it into something more than an eReader which may make things a little broken or annoying occasionally.

There is a glut of $100-$200 Android tablets out there from no name or "what? they still exist?" manufacturers but most of them are awful. Slow CPU, limited RAM, limited storage, resistive touchscreens and ancient Android versions. Pick at least 1 out of that list for each of these crap tablets.

http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/02/16/motorola-executive-defends-tablet-price-tag/



Sorry, that tablet looks like a heaping pile of crap. What's even worse than theoretical 4G speeds are those that are only vaguely promised. And even then, the metric adds little value to the tablet experience, hardly enough to justify the kind of premium they're talking about. That's just not what makes one tablet reign over another.

What amazes me the most is that these companies don't see what has actually made Apple successful. It's staring them in the face every day and they just don't get it. Apple changed its business completely. They were doing the same old same old as everybody else and it wasn't working. When Jobs came back they put the brakes on and changed the whole business.

Everyone else thinks that they can get out of their holes with simply a bigger shovel. They just want to keep doing the same thing they've been doing.

When Elop joined they put the brakes on and screwed the whole business! Somebody tell Nokia that change in direction is good but not if you're aiming further down.

But yes, Apple was stuck in a rut back then and if they didn't do their radical change in products and philosophy they'd be long dead. It saved them and made them into the 300lbs gorilla they are today.

Also, if I were someone working for Verizon, I'd be saying "woah, what's this BS about your ability to deliver these speeds? You don't have to s***"

And I agree, how does that translate to the price of this device? He still doesn't seem to acknowledge that they're pricing the Xoom higher than last year's iPad, not this year's.

Now I really want to see a company like Samsung or LG come out with a $400 tablet and kick their asses. Hell, at this point they could come out with a $600 3G tablet and still kick Motorola's butt.

Thanks for the link, Bruno. That article made me angry


More like "I've never heard of them before" companies Those things were awful. Of course, that didn't stop me from checking my local Walgreens to see if they had one I could buy, play with for a day, then return

(they didn't have one, though)

The funniest part about the comment you just quoted is that it's a perfect description of... Wait for it... Motorola.

It perfectly describes their handset business.

And those are some fine words from a company that still hasn't shipped anything at all in the tablet space.

I guess someone needs to tell that executive that his tablet only has 32GB of storage, the amount found on iPhones, and half of what's available on the iPad. Hopefully we'll see 128GB this year.

"around $600", whatever that means. I think they were seeing the response to the $799 price, and are trying to make it look as if one model is going to be priced at the 32gb iPad. Lots of press sites are dropping the around part, so it seems to be working.

I should have figured it was actually an "around" price. Nobody ever sells at exactly $600.

The problem is then: so it's $200 just for a 3/4G radio?

Doesn't anyone know how much those parts source for?

Its $200 for a 3G radio board, a 4G radio board and the technician time necessary to swap the boards when the 4G radio is actually released.

Apple charge $130 for their 3G radio.

Yeah I know, and I thought that seemed slightly high, but it looks pretty good compared to $200.


While that might be understandable, why should the consumer eat the cost of their failure to get 4G radios in there in the first place? And in the future it'll just come with 4G and not need the trade-out.

*shrug* Maybe the 3G radio is free and the 4G radio is just more expensive?

As Andy pointed out, the Apple 3G radio costs you $130 and it also appears that it is the same chip as the iPhone 3 and 3GS. Apple will have significant buying power just based on the number of those chips in the shipped units of iPhone 3, iPhone 3GS and iPad 3Gs.

3G models also include GPS receiver. And that Micro-SIM card slot.

The GPS is part of the 3G radio. A lot of the high end phone chips include GPS functionality now. Although I don't think the Xoom actually has it or if it does, its not currently enabled.