Motorola takes swipe at Apple with ad for Xoom

Motorola has taken a swipe at Apple with its first front-line ad for the Xoom – its up-coming Android-operated tablet PC.

A new commercial set to air during the Super Bowl over the weekend draws on the famous ’1984′ ad with which Apple introduced the world to the Macintosh computer.

The suggestion from Motorola is that “2011 looks a lot like 1984”, in that there seems to be only “one authority, one design, one way to work” – meaning presumably the Apple way given the early dominance of the iPad in the tablet sector.

With the earth initially in the background, followed by different parts of deep space, Motorola outlines what we can expect from the Xoom as a genuine alternative to Apple’s ten-inch slate. Most of the details we already know – a Honeycomb Android operating system, a dual-core 1GHz processor, HD video playback, Adobe Flash Player and cameras pointing front and back.

It remains to be seen how Americans and consumers worldwide will take to the Xoom but Motorola clearly isn’t pulling any punches as it sets about promoting what will be its first tablet PC device.

Although Apple was able to stretch out an enormous lead during 2010 in terms of the number of tablet devices being sold, figures released by Strategy Analytics this week suggest that Android-operated slates now account for 22 per cent of the market, up from less than five per cent three months ago.

Here’s the Motorola ad set to air during the Super Bowl…