Motorola has big expectations for its new Xoom tablet, and is planning to sell around 1 million of the devices before April 2011.

The American company is planning large-scale production of the Xoom in anticipation of a sales rush. It expects to manufacture between 700,000 and 800,000 of the new tablets before the end of the first quarter of 2011, say sources cited by DIGITIMES.

Market leader Apple had sold 1 million iPad units within the first 28 days of its release and second place Samsung hit 1 million Galaxy Tab sales within 2 months.

The Xoom will be one of the first tablets to run Google’s new Android 3.0 Honeycomb operating system. The new Android OS will be Google’s first to be designed specifically for tablets but can also be used on smartphones.

Pricing information is yet to be revealed for the Xoom, but Motorola’s new tablet is expected to be released on the Verizon network before the end of March.