While I think Motorola’s marketing team really dropped the ball with the name, the 8.2-inch XYBoard has just become a little more official today. The team at PocketNow were able to get their hands on an image of the smaller XYBoard clad in Verizon’s heraldry, along with what could be the device’s new logo.
I know, I know, the name “XYBoard” makes me irrationally angry too. Don’t let that color your perception of the tablet too much though, as the Xoom 2 is still a pretty respectable piece of kit. To wit, it sports a 1.2GHZ processor, 1GB of RAM, a 5-megapixel rear camera, and 16GB of internal storage. Oh, and unlike its international cousin, it comes packing support for Verizon’s 4G LTE network.
But (and this is the big question) will all that be enough to draw an audience? That I don’t know. As Matt Burns pointed out, specs for these things are becoming less and less relevant (or they could already be dead, if you believe MG). It’s all coming down to the sort of experience tablets can deliver, and hopefully Motorola’s got a winning formula ready.
Still, that’s not all it takes to create a success. Strong branding can help drive purchasing decisions, but there’s such a thing as a bad kind of strong, and that’s what I think Motorola has going with the XYBoard moniker. That coupled with the historically lame performance of the Xoom means Motorola (and Verizon) may still be facing an uphill battle with their new tablets.