Motorola has fired a shot over the bow of Apple"s iPad with their Superbowl commercial for the Xoom. The commercial takes a page from Apple"s own 1984 Superbowl commercial, showing mindless drones wearing the ubiquitous white ear buds. The star of the commercial is reading Orwell"s 1984 and is going against the crowd while using his Xoom tablet. He has a bouquet of flowers and using that and his Xoom, he makes a video to show the object of his desire -- another Apple drone. The gesture is enough to make her pull the ear buds from her ears and smile. The commercial ends with the phrase, "The Tablet to Create a Better World."
The commercial does a good job of mimicking the 1984 commercial and tries to show Apple fans as sheep following the herd. The question is whether the general public will understand what the commercial is selling and if they do, whether they will actually agree with it.
As reported earlier, the Xoom goes on sale on February 17th for a list price of $699.
UPDATE: It appears that Motorola"s Xoom page is officially live now. In addition, according to a Best Buy ad posted on Engadget, the Xoom will retail for $799.99 and not be released until February 24th.