Analyst: 15,000 to 120,000 Xooms sold. Motorola's survival at risk
Rather than try to out-innovate Apple, he says, it should sue its Android competitors — There's some pretty blunt language in the latest note to clients from Global Equities' Trip Chowdry, who may have been spending …
Context & Ripple Effects
The Xoom has been sliding since launch: Wall Street Journal researchers flagged in February how its cameras and display drive up costs, March brought reports of tepid sales and possible production cuts, and Silicon Alley Insider put cumulative sales at roughly 100,000 units in early April. Global Equities' Trip Chowdry now goes further than any of those reports — estimating as few as 15,000 to 120,000 Xooms sold (an unconfirmed analyst figure) and bluntly warning that Motorola's survival is at risk.
What makes the note notable is the prescription: rather than try to out-innovate Apple, Chowdry argues Motorola should sue its fellow Android competitors. That reframes the problem from a product gap versus the iPad to a strategic fork for the whole Android licensee camp.
First-order effects
- Chowdry's estimate keeps the production-cut question hanging over Motorola's Xoom line, with inventory and component orders the immediate lever if sell-through really sits in five figures.
- The public survival warning sharpens investor scrutiny of Motorola Mobility's tablet spending at precisely the moment its Android rivals are shipping competing slates.
Second-order effects
- If Motorola took the litigation path Chowdry recommends, Samsung, HTC and other Android licensees would become potential legal targets even as they share a platform against Apple — splitting the ecosystem's attention between the iPad and each other.
- Weak Xoom demand flows straight back to the camera and display suppliers that the February cost analysis identified as the device's expensive components, pressuring pricing on future tablet builds.
Third-order effects
- If Android hardware vendors answer Apple-scale competition with lawsuits instead of differentiated products, patent portfolios — not spec sheets — become what determines which licensees survive.
- A flagship Android tablet selling in five figures while the iPad dominates suggests the tablet market may consolidate around vertically integrated players, squeezing out second-tier licensees who lack either scale or a defensible patent position.
The trend: Android tablet makers are being pushed from competing with Apple on products toward fighting each other over patents, as differentiation fails against the iPad.