Buyers of Motorola"s Xoom tablet who got the product via Verizon Wireless have been waiting patiently for the long promised upgrade to make the tablet compatible with Verizon"s expanding 4G LTE based wireless network. Now it looks like there is light at the end of the tunnel for these users. News.com reports that Verizon will start informing its Xoom customers that it will begin offering a 4G LTE card update for the tablet sometime in September.
The 3G version of the Xoom was launched back in February and was heavily promoted beforehand by both Motorola and Verizon Wireless. However, the tablet which uses the Honeycomb version of Google"s Android operating system, has delayed the promised 4G LTE upgrade for some time. News.com stated that Motorola "struggled with the necessary components required to get 4G access". Officially Motorola shipped 250,000 units of the Xoom in the first quarter of 2011 and previously announced that it would ship a total of 1.5 million to 2 million tablets by the end of the year. We should learn more about the Xoom"s status when Motorola reveals its second quarter 2011 results on Thursday.
The 4G LTE update for the Verizon version of the Xoom comes as Verizon continues to aggressively expand the faster wireless network across the US. The network is already in over 100 US cities and metro areas and earlier this week the company revealed that it will expand the 4G LTE network in a number of other locations in the US on August 18.