Yesterday, Motorola released its response to the iPad (and every other less-known tablet), the Xoom at Best Buy and Verizon stores. To coincide with its release, the latter, which is its main service provider, released the above spot which sees the Xoom in some sort of frightening futuristic world dominated by machines and spaceship shooter video games. Basically, it’s the spiritual sequel to Verizon’s campaign series for the Motorola Droid phones.
This marks Verizon’s first ads for the Xoom, which looks a little different than Motorola’s “Empower the People” minute-long Superbowl ad, which blended Apple’s slick hipster user characterization with the whole “Goodbye 1984” thing that ran for Xoom prior to the game.
So, which of these different approaches is actually going to sell the thing? Verizon’s robots? A direct challenge to Apple? What about targeting Apple’s same audience while mocking them at the same time? Any way you slice it, the iPad 2 is set for an official debut early next month. The original iPad is currently retailing at $499 in contrast to the Xoom’s higher $800 price tag, so the whole cost efficiency thing isn’t carrying over from the computers to the notebooks. Good luck, Xoom, and check out a second ad after the jump.