Motorola & Verizon launching two Android tablets in time for holiday shopping

Two new tablets are joining the Motorola/Verizon Droid lineup in time for holiday shopping.

The tablets will both be called Xyboard, a punny name that plays well off the current heavy-on-robotics Droid marketing.

One model will apparently feature an 8.2-inch screen, and the other will feature a larger 10.1-inch screen. Both will have 4G LTE connectivity, as noted in a Verizon press release today.

Sadly, few other specs about the tablets have been confirmed. We’re especially interested to know whether the Xyboards will be running Android 4.0, a.k.a. Ice Cream Sandwich, the one-size-fits-all version of Android intended to run on both smartphones and tablets (as well as just about any other connected device).

While Android tablets are still nowhere near market dominance, they are slowly chipping away at the iPad’s market share. As of August 2011, Android tablets held around 20 percent of the tablet market globally.

However, this holiday shopping season in particular, the heavyweight, high-powered tablets in the Android spectrum are also up against a slate of low-cost touchscreen ereader-tablet hybrids. These units, exemplified by Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s Nook Tablet, pack a powerful punch that includes games, apps, full-color screens, email, web browsing and (incidentally) ebooks.

Most of the hybrids retail for around $200, and they fit the bill for all but the most graphics-intensive users.

We’ll see where the Xyboards and other Android units fall on the collective holiday wishlist — and whether Android can expand is successful smartphone stake into tablet territory.

Image courtesy of laihui.