Motorola Mobility's Xoom tablet computer officially debuts

Libertyville, Ill.—Motorola Mobility Thursday officially released its Xoom tablet computer, featuring the Honeycomb version of Google's Android operating system and positioned to compete against Apple Inc.'s market-leading iPad.

Priced at $800, Xoom closely matches the iPad's features, with a 10.1-inch display, 1280-by-800 screen resolution, 1GB RAM, 32GB internal memory, and front and rear cameras. It joins the $649 Samsung Galaxy Tab (introduced at the end of last year with a slightly smaller 7-inch screen) in the tablet computer market.

Xoom was previewed at January's Consumer Electronics Show, where it was named best new gadget. About 80 companies unveiled tablet computers at CES, but few were ready for the market.

Meanwhile, Apple next week is expected to release its iPad2, an update of the tablet computer it introduced last April. According to a new report this week from ABI Research, the iPad accounted for 93% (4.19 million) of the 4.5 million tablet computers sold in the third quarter of 2010, the most recent quarter ABI measured.