Motorola has announced a $100 price cut for the Motorola XOOM Wi-Fi Android tablet from its original MSRP of $599.99 to $499.99 effective immediately.
This cut does not affect the Verizon branded XOOM 3G version, which will remain at its current $799.99 retail price point (sans contract). The Xoom Wi-Fi is identical to the Verizon version save for the lack of a cellular radio, with a 1280×800 capacitive touch display and Android Honeycomb along with front facing and rear cameras.
The XOOM Wi-Fi is also the first Honeycomb tablet to be updated to Android 3.1 after launching to tepid reviews stemming from the early build of Honeycomb 3.0 which was considered incomplete. Despite being updated to Android 3.1, XOOM has suffered from extremely lackluster sales, especially compared to Apple’s much more successful iPad. The failure of XOOM has been large enough to be a black eye against Google’s Honeycomb release of Android, leaving other tablet manufacturers and Motorola alike struggling to compete effectively.
Verizon drop price? Never.