Google’s Nexus 7 could change Android tabs for good

Google is expected to announce a Nexus tablet, the first of its kind, tomorrow to kickstart proceedings at its annual Google I/O developer summit. The tablet is expected to come in two variants priced at $199 and $249 and would run the latest version of Android, called Jelly Bean, which would also be announced at the event. Eric Schmidt had hinted at a $200 Android tablet in December last year and it seems we could finally see it tomorrow. In my view, the Nexus 7 tablet could be Google’s best attempt till date at having some decent market share in the tablet space and could change Android tablets for ever. Read on.
There is no doubt that the biggest draw for the Nexus 7 would be its pricing. Having followed three generations of iPads and wannabe iPad Android tabs, there is no doubt in my mind that Android tablets sell purely for their price. I have not seen a single Android tablet succeed in the market that has been priced at par or above the iPad. While most of them offer great specifications on paper but there are hardly any apps available in Android Market (Google Play just doesn’t sound right) to utilize the hardware. What one is left with is a large slate for browsing the web or watching movies.
Having said that, there are a number of sub-Rs 15,000 Android tablets available but even they are not exactly setting the market on fire. I have tried using some of these tablets but the user experience is pathetic. Most of them heat up worse than an old Maruti 800 from the early nineties on Delhi’s streets at the peak of summer and their inferior displays ensure a sprained neck thanks to poor viewing angles.
Many hardware manufacturers like Asus and Lenovo have tried snapping on keyboards with the tablet to entice the enterprise crowd of mistaking it for a hybrid tablet-cum-laptop. I have tried them too and found them to be way too expensive. Also Android, like iOS, has not been designed to work with cursors and mice. That market is best left for Microsoft and its upcoming Windows 8 portable devices, including the Surface.
Google is stuck in a vicious circle. The high-end Android tablets don’t sell because of lack of apps. The low-end ones have inferior hardware that are not capable of giving the right experience. What Android really needs is an affordable tablet with top-of-the-line specs, which would invoke confidence among developers to develop apps for Android tablets. That’s exactly what the Nexus 7 is all about.
Any sane Android tablet vendor would like to maximize its margins at the point of sale considering it does not get to keep a cut out of every app sold (like Apple) or can recover cost later by selling content (like Amazon). For them giving top-of-the-line hardware that is better than the iPad on paper for less than half of the iPad’s retail price does not make good business sense. And understandably so. Since Google does not control both the software and hardware elements (yet), the only option left is to collaborate with an OEM partner to bring the price down artificially.
If the leaked specifications of the Nexus 7′s are true, we might finally have an Android tablet that is cheap and usable at the same time. This might force other Android tablet OEMs to bring lower their prices but I doubt that happening. Most likely, they will ask Google to partner with them for similar Nexus tablets. Yes, it would imply Google handing out a “platform support fee” to select OEMs but it would further its cause and ensure Android tabs stay alive when Microsoft’s “your tablet is also a full PC” campaign begins later this year with Windows 8.