It has been known for a while now that Google are working on a “Nexus Tablet” to bring lead the way and bring competition to the tablet market, and if The Verge’s exclusive report is true, that market is the 7-inch tablet market. It is said that Google have internally pushed back the release date of the tablet to change the design and ensure the price is lower than the current estimate of $249. If it can hit the sub $200 mark, they just might be onto a winner.
While it might be reasonable to think that the push back is due to the possibility of launching with Android 5.0 “Jelly Bean”, The Verge’s sources are certain that’s not the case. Instead the 7-inch tablet will come with NVIDIA’s Quad-Core Tegra 3 CPU (we’d prefer Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4, but we can’t all be winners), Android 4.0 “Ice Cream Sandwich”, and will be Wi-Fi only.
Being Wi-Fi only makes it easier for Google to sell this themselves through an online store and not through carriers. That move can also be a double-edged sword — the lack of carriers pushing the device will make it harder to publicise the device to the average consumer walking into a carrier’s store. That being said, Google can easily place an ad on their home page which millions of people access on a daily basis.
All i can say is if i dont see a premium 10 inch nexus tablet from google, Im really going to consider other ecosystem for my next tablet.
I was considering buying a cheap chinese apad all whatever just to play around with. I think i will wait til this comes out in July now, if it’s any good it should give the cheap tablets a run for there money.
Sounds unrealistic. The kindle fire is losing money at that price point and its a piece of sh1t. Unless the current field of android tablets have 100 per cent margins this cant be viable. And if it will go ahead it will kill all other android tablets OR have cheap as chips components that will leave you wishing you didnt get it
I think Google can afford to sell these tablets below cost price and use the revenue gained from advertising to subsidised the sale of the tablet. Basically the more tablets they will sell means more advertising dollars for them.
i think what they really want is to boost the android tablet numbers to get devs to start making tablet apps
This would serve as a great entry level, and pricing seems the part.. will have to wait and see what they come up with. Wouldn’t mind a 10.1 google tablet but that’s me.
I don’t understand the purpose of the Nexus tablet. Don’t the majority of tablets that run Honeycomb/ICS have it stock anyway?
Yeah, but they all suck. I’m yet to use a good Android tablet.
I agree with that. The iPad annihilates Android tablets. Though I don’t think a cheap-ass ‘nexus’ tablet will do anything to change the situation. It’ll be up to manufacturers to push high-end tablets that will rival the iPad. For whatever reason, Android tablets displayed at stores (say JB Hi Fi) are always super slow and laggy. It doesn’t help when there’s an iPad sitting next to them that’s super fast and super slick. Also, I hope Jellybean is an improvement over ICS. As much of an upgrade ICS is over GB, it still has quite a lot of issues that… Read more »
No, not really. Most tablets have at least some minor changes to stock android software. Thats why so many tablets are stuck on honeycomb which is so buggy. Had all tablets been stock, im sure the user experience experience would of been much improved by now.
Don’t the Transformer Prime and Motorla Xoom have stock Android ICS on them?
I thought the only company that altered their tablet was Samsung which overlayed a modified Touchwiz on them.
I have the Transformer Prime and ASUS did some slight modifications to the stock ICS. Nothing much really some cosmetic to the icons and some functions, and as far as I can tell, nothing they added tend to get in the way in fact helps do stuff stock ICS can’t. A few of ASUS’s addition can actually be turned off and reverts to their vanilla ICS counterpart.
Well I guess this tablet would serve to increase the market share of android tablets by putting it in the hands of more people.
Sounds interesting. But don’t forget that the carriers also sell “mobile broadband” with home routers and “mi-fi” portable hotspots. Telstra/Bigpond and Optus also sell ADSL and cable Internet. So the carriers could still be interested in selling these tablets if they’re wi-fi-only.
Ooh. I just entered the tablet market. If the Galaxy 7.7 had either quad core or ICS I’d probably have bought it already. This sounds great to me.