Verizon Wireless prepping two 4G Droid tablets for this month
The 8-inch Droid Xyboard (left) and its 10-inch brother. — Verizon Wireless will launch two more tablets, both carrying the premium Droid brand, before the end of the year, CNET has learned.
Context & Ripple Effects
Verizon's tablet push has been building all year: Motorola's XOOM arrived in January as the first Honeycomb slate, and the carrier spent 2011 expanding its LTE footprint to 74 metropolitan areas by June. Now CNET reports — still unconfirmed by Verizon — that two 4G tablets carrying the premium Droid brand, an 8-inch and a 10-inch Droid Xyboard, will land before year-end.
The timing fits a broader December hardware blitz at Verizon: the DROID 4 is slated for December 8, reportedly the same day as the Galaxy Nexus, and a Verizon Cellebrite unit already surfaced several unannounced devices this fall. Extending the Droid name from phones to tablets gives Motorola and Verizon a co-marketing umbrella across both categories heading into the holidays.
First-order effects
- Motorola gets a second shot at the Android tablet market under Verizon's strongest consumer brand, with both Xyboards riding the carrier's LTE network rather than competing as Wi-Fi-only slates.
Second-order effects
- Verizon's December lineup gets crowded fast — the Xyboards would share shelf space and marketing dollars with the DROID 4 and Galaxy Nexus, forcing the carrier to prioritize which devices get launch-day promotion.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, carrier-exclusive branding plus 4G connectivity becomes the main lever Android tablet makers have against Apple's iPad distribution — a structure where Verizon and Motorola succeed or fail together on co-branded hardware.
The trend: Android tablets are consolidating around carrier-exclusive brand families tied to LTE buildouts, with the Droid line expanding from phones into slates.