Motorola Xooms into Australia in May

AUSTRALIANS will be able to get their hands on the other genuine iPad rival - the Xoom - in May.

Motorola XOOM tablet screen

AUSTRALIANS will be able to get their hands on the other genuine iPad rival as early as next month.

With Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1v on sale through Vodafone this week, Motorola has announced it will be in the market sometime in May with its much-lauded Xoom tablet.

The Xoom will launch on the Telstra Next G network. No price has yet been announced.

Gallery - The top iPad rivals in 2011

Along with the new Galaxy, the Android-powered device is the first to run Google's Honeycomb operating system, designed for the new generation of tablet PCs.

Winner of best tablet device at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it boasts a larger screen than the iPad 2, recharges in half the time and allows users to personalise their screen in myriad ways.

Telstra mobile broadband director Anthea Roberts said Android-powered smartphones had opened minds to the possibilities of non-iPad devices.

"It's all about choice," Ms Roberts said. "Tablets are exploding and Xoom will help grow the market."

Google hopes the Honeycomb software will help it replicate its success in the highly competitive smartphone market.

Of the three main tablets, the Xoom is easily the biggest, weighing 730g compared to the iPad 2's 613g and the Galaxy Tab's 599g.

On the hardware side, it's better specced than Apple's effort, boasting 5 MP (back) and 2 MP (front) cameras compared to the iPad 2's -barely-a-meg efforts. The Xoom also has a higher res screen (1280x800 versus 1024x768).

Both claim a 10-hour battery life, but Motorola says the Xoom charges twice as fast.

Both feature 1GHz dual-core processors. The Xoom comes with 32GB of memory and 1GB of RAM, while the iPad comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB versions.

On the software side, Apple's product still wins hands-down, with its App Store boasting three times as many apps (300,000 to 100,000) and more than 65,000 of them tailored purely for the iPad.

Sales of the Xoom in the US were reported as slow, but Motorola insists it's happy with shifting 100,000 units in the first month.

Telsyte research director Foad Fadaghi said the Xoom would have its work cut out in Australia.

"It's thicker than the iPad 2, its software is a bit underdeveloped and there are 10 times as many tablet specific apps for the iPad than for Android tablet devices," Mr Fadaghi said.

However, despite its success in so far monopolising the tablet market, Apple, in the meantime, is resorting to trying to sue everyone.

At the moment, it has patent infringement suits lined up against Samsung for "blatant copying" of its devices and HTC, for, well, pretty much the same thing.

It's also still trying to own the term "App Store", which rivals say is something akin to trying to own the name "grocery store".