Hard sell: Motorola $ 800 Tablet Xoom, no Flash support

Xoom Motorola Tablet is seen by many as the first big iPad competitor, but its steep $ 800 price and lack of support for Adobe Flash suggest otherwise.

The forthcoming Motorola Xoom fell at the first hurdle in the fight against the dominance of Apple's iPad? After Motorola announced that its contestant iPad will cost more than a promo to iPad, Verizon discovered that Xoom doesn't support Adobe's Flash technology up sometime this spring.

Support for Adobe Flash technology has been a topic for the operating system Android because Apple's CEO Steve Jobs famously said that Flash is a dying technology and that it will not make up iOS devices for several reasons. Flash support in Android appeared with version 2.2 and Google even ostentatious as a killer feature for tablets running honeycomb (3.0), how the Motorola Xoom.

But it seems that Adobe and/or Google have yet to put the finishing touches on the implementation of Flash on Android 3.0. An advertisement for the Verizon website Xoom says (in section 6 below) that support Adobe Flash on Xoom is expected in the spring of 2011, which means that this feature will not be available at launch of the first tablet Honeycomb on 24 February. Considering how carriers and manufacturers are slow when it comes to software updates, this 2011 spring update could mean more like late spring 2011 ETA.

Meanwhile, Adobe said last week at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona that is still working on Flash 10.1 for Smartphones and tablets running Android. The company promised users dual core tablets and phones will benefit of HD Flash video, and up to 30 frames per second performance. Flash 10.1 for Windows and Mac was released earlier this month, but Adobe gave no clear indication when the mobile version of the plug-in will actually be available to users.

So far, despite initial positive responses from reviewers, the Motorola Xoom doesn't have two tests against iPad. Despite better specifications of Xoom, the Tablet is still the most expensive iPad matching. IPad 32 GB 3 G costs $ 729, while the equivalent of Xoom is $ 800, plus any contracts which may need to sign up with Verizon. Add that to the fact that the Flash will initially support, a feature is missing in the war against iPad, and do not accumulate possibility of Xoom to be suddenly a great success, that's okay.

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