On Wednesday, Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) unveiled their latest Android tablet Nexus 7. The highly -anticipated gadget brings everything you’d expect from a tablet computer but at a lower price. Unfortunately, the new tablet could end up costing Google in the long run.
Andy Rubin, Google Android executive, told All Things D that Nexus 7 was not going to yield them any profit, ““When it gets sold through the Play store, there’s no margin, it just basically gets [sold] through.” He also admitted that Google is absorbing all the marketing-related costs surrounding Nexus 7.
This means that Google will have to look for other ways to make up for the loss which will most likely include more advertising and content sales on their Play store. This move could also mean big changes for other Android makers as they would feel the pressure to make changes to benefit their products as well.
This new budget-friendly table features an overall sleek design, crisp seven inch display with 1280 x 800 high resolution display, quad core processor, eight-hour battery life, gyroscope and accelerometer sensors, 12-core GPU, and patented 4-plus-1 CPU design. It also runs on Android’s 4.1 Jelly Bean software. Interesting enough, Google Nexus 7 was announced shortly after Microsoft’s announcement of the Surface tablet.
Both tablets feature different specs and drastically different price points. The Surface tablet features 10.6 inch HD display, Windows RT, Nvidia Tegra CPU, Wifi, USB Port, and Core Intel Core i5 “Ivy Bridge” processor. Microsoft’s Surface tablet retails $599 for the RT model and $999 for Pro model. Google’s Nexus 7 starts at $199 for 8GB storage and $249 for 16GB.
Overall, Google tablet sounds like a real bargain but it’s obviously too early to tell how either tablet will fare in the long run. Microsoft’s Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) version sounds nice but, but given it’s prices and specs, I just don’t see how it’s going to compete with all the other tablets on the market.
