

Asus says Nexus 7 sales are close to 1 million per month - xhrpost
http://www.slashgear.com/asus-says-nexus-7-sales-are-close-to-1-million-per-month-31254997/

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Tyrannosaurs
Those sales, while not iPad league, aren't too shabby for a single Android
device and, significantly, seem to be growing.

Will be interesting to see what the iPad Mini might do to Nexus 7 sales.

Certainly there are going to be a bunch of them that are people who
specifically want an Android tablet, and there are going to be a bunch who are
highly price sensitive (question there being are the newer Kindles having an
impact) who aren't going to being looking at the new iPad, but there will also
be people who just like the form factor for whom the Mini might be
interesting.

Short term though I suspect we'll see what we've seen in the smartphone market
- plenty of overall market growth meaning plenty of unit sales growth for
everyone (except RIM) which will keep the market interesting.

~~~
Shivetya
I am looking to pick up a Nexus 7 this week to evaluate its gift potential.
There are two areas where it falls behind the iPad mini for me. First is the
Apple App store appears to be in much better shape. I can get around that
pretty easily, the second is the lack of back facing camera.

The reason the second issue stands out is that I would like to gift these to
my niece and nephew. When using my iPad or their parents smart phones they
love to use the camera to take pictures. So I am was a bit disappointed over
the omission.

The main point in the Nexus 7's favor for me is its price. So the make or
break will be software, namely some learning apps and games.

I would prefer to avoid buying an Apple product; I own many; based on their
emphasis on lawsuits recently but they do have some features on their tablet
that are hard to pass up and the old adage reworded for our age probably holds
true, no one will be disappointed getting an iPad for Christmas. (the old
adage of no one was fired for buying IBM)

~~~
hospadam
As someone who owns both an iPad and Nexus 7 - they're both great devices.
But, if you're looking for "learning apps and games" - the iOS App Store wins,
hands down. The Android store is definitely growing with respect to games...
but I've found the quality of "learning" apps to be quite low on Android. I'm
not sure why, and I'm sure it will get better.

If you're looking for "learning" apps for kids aged 2 - 14, I'd stick with iOS
devices (for now).

~~~
lukeschlather
Depends on the age. For ages 10+ the Android SDK is a pretty awesome
"learning" app, and it's free.

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Tyrannosaurs
The SDK is for Windows / Mac / Linux. Is he buying them a PC too?

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lukeschlather
If you really want something that only requires the device, the Android
Scripting Environment is pretty awesome, and it comes with a dozen examples
for things like controlling Android's speech synthesizer which a kid could
have a lot of fun playing around with.

<http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/>

~~~
BitMastro
AIDE as well gives you a complete IDE on the device
<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui>

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jusben1369
One of my pet peeve's in articles like this is to change the metrics midway.
Specifically, all Nexus references are made to monthly sales. So you see
things like "600,000 per month" or "nearly 1 million per month"

Switch to Apple sales and it's "15 million in Q3" Holy smoke that's huge
compared to Nexus!! Yet imagine another headline stating "Nexus taking nearly
20% of marketshare from Apple iPad!" 1 million per month and ramping = 3
million a quarter which is 20% of 15 million and so forth.

I have neither an iPad nor a Nexus 7 so no dog in this fight (MacBook Air and
Nexus S phone) I just wanted to point out the annoyance when you use different
measuring units within the one article. It can really distort the outlook.

Final note - more impressive to me than the total number sold is the ramp.
This is significant month over month momentum since launching. I suspect the
iPad Mini - now that the wait is over- will either a) drive sales higher based
on the price/value differential or b) knee cap momentum. Based purely on a
sample case of 1 (me) I held off the Nexus 7 until the iPad Mini arrived. The
iOS and ecosystem still beats Android but based on the price differential I'll
go with the Nexus 7 now. The gaps that exist between the two are continuing to
close due to where both are in their respective life cycles.

~~~
pooriaazimi
That's why I always wait for <http://asymco.com> to do the math and fact-check
the data and compile a pretty chart.

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josteink
And with Nexus 10 looking pretty damn sweet, I guess 2012 can be declared the
year when Android tablets finally took hold.

With all the wonderful things Android-phones has done for the general smart-
phone, it was about time we had the same revolution happen in tablet-space.

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Tyrannosaurs
You mean Android tablets other than the Fire which sold a boatload last year?

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WrkInProgress
Are there any official sales figures on the Fire ?

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Tyrannosaurs
No, but estimates put the number as high as 5 million in 2011 alone.

But neither Amazon nor Google report specific sales numbers.

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nicholassmith
I'm always slightly curious about these when they appear, when they say
they're selling X amount per month, do they mean they've sold X amount per
month that are in consumers hands, or X amount per month where so many are in
consumer hands, so many are in retail supply chains? Same goes for Apple, but
to a larger extent they manage sales through their own channels.

Obviously N7 is delayed shipment in many places so I imagine a lot are in
peoples hands, still curious.

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GauntletWizard
Do you think Retailers are stocking up on phones that aren't selling? That
each month, fifty thousand electronic devices are stored in stockrooms, never
to be seen again?

The units sold to consumers closely resembles the tail of current shipped
units, just delayed a bit; the larger the number and the bigger ticket the
item the closer those curves are.

~~~
_djo_
It's a fair question, as channel stuffing is not unheard of. The HP TouchPad,
for instance, shipped far more units than were sold to customers. At one point
Best Buy sat on over 200 000 unsold TouchPads that were returned to HP and
eventually priced at just $99 each to get rid of the inventory.

With that said, I think the correlation between shipping numbers and sales for
the Nexus 4 is probably close, considering the clear demand for the phone.

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Cherian_Abraham
Great news for Google, except the hardware quality doth suffer. I had to RMA
my first one, as the audio jack was spotty and only outputted one channel. The
second one arrived with exactly the same issue and a screen that wobbled.
RMA'd that one to get a third one, and saw that it was one of the early
batches that had a ton of issues and I didn't bother keeping it to find out
what was wrong with it.

So Google, if it has any hopes for displacing iPad, needs to clamp down on
quality issues with its suppliers and make sure that these products match up
to the incumbents they are hell bent on displacing.

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acedanger
The quality issues really fall on Asus, not Google. Asus is the hardware
manufacturer.

Besides that, I agree. My first Nexus 7 had the "wobbly" screen, but only on
the left-hand side, about mid-ways up.

~~~
czhiddy
The issues do lie with Asus, but your average consumer isn't going to make
that distinction. All they see is Google/Nexus branding.

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potkor
They aren't keeping up with demand. Eg. in Finland they've been constantly
sold out since it launched a few weeks ago (same time with Scandinavia). The
16GB version is 269.90 EUR / 350.68 USD, and doesn't include the $25 Play
voucher, the 8GB version is not sold here at all.

I suspect there is one set of primary-market/trend-setter countries where
Google is selling it with near-zero margins and has first cut of shipments,
and then the rest of the world where Asus sells it through their retailers and
collects a lucrative profit margin.

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listic
Has Nexus 7 actually officially launched in Finland? It isn't mentioned in the
Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexus_7>

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bookwormAT
Austria was not mentioned on Wikipedia as well, but it is sold here since
September. Being a good Wikipedian, I added the release date to the site.

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panacea
Doesn't surprise me. They got there (the 7 inch space that I'm confident Apple
always had their eyes on in their roadmap), before Apple, with a competent
device and great hardware.

And I mean, really great hardware... The rubberized backing but still has nice
proportions for everything else, makes it akin to the equal and opposite to
the latest iPhone. Both awesome hardware designs in their own right.

I think the Nexus 7 bests the iPad Mini in hardware design, whilst the iPad 4
still trounces the ugly Nexus 10.

~~~
bryanlarsen
Have you actually seen a Nexus 10 in person? Early reviews are praising the
Nexus 10 hardware design, claiming that it's much easier to hold one handed
than the iPad.

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Jabbles
The article raises a good point. Should we compare this to the iPad? (iPad 3?)
It's a different size and price point. The Kindle Fire is the only other
tablet with as high a profile as the Nexus 7, and we don't have sales numbers
on that, either (which makes me wonder how they know the total number of
tablets).

I'm glad it's been successful as I'm quite pleased with mine, but I'm not sure
this announcement tells us anything at all (even if it had clear numbers).

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macspoofing
It's a great device. It's nice to see Google (and Asus) being rewarded for it.

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mchristoff
Let's not forget all of these N7s come with a $25 Play credit. This is great
for Android devs. We've seen a big increase in sales since it went on sale
this summer.

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robotmay
If anyone in the UK is after one, eBuyer are currently doing a pretty nice
deal; 32GB Nexus 7 for £200 (RRP of the 16GB I think):
[http://www.ebuyer.com/398430-asus-google-nexus-7-32gb-
tablet...](http://www.ebuyer.com/398430-asus-google-nexus-7-32gb-tablet-
pc-90ok0mi1101090u)

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metatronscube
Does that include the replacements and repairs, because I have had a 'new'
nexus 4 times now.

~~~
bobbles
My friend had his Nexus 7 in his pocket (as he always had done) and just the
process of sitting on the couch caused enough pressure to destroy the screen.

Google / ASUS provided no support and he just went and bought a whole new
device (he was told the price of repair was basically the same as
replacement).

Unlike most of the devices I've seen when the screen was cracked (really just
a hairline crack across the face), it became completely unusable.

~~~
metatronscube
Yeah I have had that experience about 4 times now, like you said, when cracked
its completely useless. I broke the first one by sitting the device on the top
of a stack of books and research material and then proceeding to pick that
bundle up. My thumb holding the nexus 7 and that was enough to put a split
from corner to corner. I have given up on the device and Android. I went back
to using my old ipad 1 which has been dropped and thrown about for 2-3 years
now and not even a scratch or buff on the back and certainly no cracks or
chips on the screen. I made the mistake of getting a nexus 7 for my brother
and both parents and they have ALL had problems with it (each was about £209
in the UK). They are all getting ipads now.

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programminggeek
Note that selling 1 million a month is obviously great for Android, but it's
not even close to the same as say selling 1 million Galaxy S3's per month.
Asus and Google have both basically said that they are selling the Nexus 7 at
break even or a small loss. Google pretty much has to do this, but it's not
exactly helping their bottom line in the same way that Apple selling 1 million
iPad Mini's helps Apple's bottom line. At $130 profit per device (which is
probably a bit low) Apple would profit $1.56 billion per year with the same
sales volume, vs basically $0 per year for Google/Asus.

It might not be all about profit for everybody, but $1.56 billion buys a lot
of R&D, advanced manufacturing, etc. which puts Apple in an even better
strategic position on both the product and operations side of the business,
which continues to drive profit.

~~~
guelo
As long as Google remains a healthy giant company profits should not matter to
anyone except Google and Apple investors. For everybody else this is great
news. For android developers and users it means that there is more incentive
for making tablet apps. For Apple and Amazon users it means that there is
serious competition which should mean lower prices and continued innovation
going forward.

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taligent
But it also means that the users will be disproportionately price sensitive.

Which as a developer means your options are limited about what price you can
charge for your app and hence what type of app you can build.

~~~
BitMastro
Elitism much? What next? Let's target only white people. No, just males! They
earn more on average than woman!

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mtgx
There is probably a bottleneck in sales, too, because Nexus 7 is only
available for sale in like under 10 countries, while the iPad is available in
many more.

