Google, Asus co-brand tablet to take on Amazon Kindle Fire
$199 seven-incher out in May?
Asus and Google are working on a co-branded 7in tablet designed to take the fight to Amazon's Kindle Fire, but the gadget won't be unveiled to the public before May.
So say unnamed industry sources, cited by DigiTimes, who add that the Android-running tablet will be the first to use Google's new Play online shop.
As such, the gadget will be pitched at the Fire, also a device tied to an online shop as a mobile content acquisition and consumption product.
Interestingly, the moles say Google approached other vendors, including HTC and Acer. Asus was the most happy to punt a low-cost tablet, unworried that the entry level positioning would tarnish its brand.
The Asus/Google tablet is expected to retail for $199-249 (£126-158) before local sales taxes.
Even if the tablet isn't released in May - said to be the "earliest" point at which the launch could take place - it should come in ahead of Apple's rumoured 7.85in 'iPad Mini', said to have been scheduled for Q3. ®
COMMENTS
Re: Not using Motorola then? Yes, but
Maybe Asus is a better choice. A history of excellent, well engineered and durable hardware, fast to market and able to deliver at the low end. They invented the netbook market.
Sadly their marketing could not keep pace and they lost out there. Let's hope second time round they have hired some better marketeers and put some guts and volume into the non-Apple fondleslab market..
Re: Any Android entry level tablet
My phone came with non-Google apps & services for books, music and movies, and gave me the option to install the Google equivalents (other than Google Music in the UK) or something completely different. I can install a different market app if I want to as well.
But muppets think it's "not open".
Stung into action...
I imagine Google have more or less had to do this. Having set up the only credible non-IOS market, in tablets at least, the only serious competitor to Apple's volumes is the one that's been (at least partially) cleansed of Google's data harvesting tools.
So now Google are "partnering" (for which I read subsidizing) with Asus to limit the damage.
That must hurt :-)
On a more serious note, if I were an Android Licensee I'd be a bit hacked right off. Having watched Apple decimate me in the premium end of the business, to have then to watch Google kill me at the bottom end too is a bit of a body blow.
Re: Any Android entry level tablet
Google isn't banning anyone from using 3rd party payment services only stating that apps that are hosted via the Google Play have to use Google Wallet.
You can get an app from anywhere, that uses any payment method you want.
They can't really lock it down to using a single market either without changing their whole developer ecosystem and becoming a walled garden - which is more than a little unlikley.
Branded lunatics
"Asus was the most happy to punt a low-cost tablet, unworried that the entry level positioning would tarnish its brand."
I think the fact that Asus' competitors seem to think they *have* a premium brand when it comes to tablets says a lot about their current lack of sales.
Personally, I'm quite impressed with Asus, a few dodgy firmware updates aside, and I think they would have been a far better choice than Samsung, Acer and Motorola even if the latter hadn't been so precious.
