
Rumor: Nexus tablet is a “done deal” - taylorbuley
http://androidandme.com/2012/03/opinions/rumor-nexus-tablet-is-a-done-deal-to-retail-for-as-low-as-149/
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Steko
Summary:

"a tablet of the highest quality"

"quad-core Tegra 3 processor is out"

"target price has been lowered to $149"

It seems to me that you can have one or the other. You can make a solid $149
tablet with many compromises. Or you can make a tablet that has top (ipad)
quality hardware. You can't really do both without shoveling money into the
toilet.

Indeed Asus already makes a tablet with top quality hardware. It sells for
$499.

~~~
w1ntermute
Yeah, it's funny to hear people trashing Android tablets when I'm sitting with
a Transformer Prime right now. It works great, and does everything I could ask
for from a tablet.

~~~
cageface
I suspect that you do need a reasonable app ecosystem to get a tablet off the
ground, but that once you've got the bases covered the difference between 100k
apps and 400k apps becomes largely academic. If you've got a solid browser,
clients for email, Facebook, and Twitter, and a reasonable ebook, movie, music
and photo apps you've covered the needs of 90% of your potential buyers. Oh
and Angry Birds, of course.

Which is why I expect Apple to continue to own the top end of the tablet
market but continue to lose overall marketshare to the greater diversity of
increasingly acceptable Android alternatives. I particularly think that the 7"
form factor is going to be more than a niche and the pain Android developers
have suffered up front in coding to multiple screen sizes and form factors is
going to pay off.

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forrestthewoods
Is there any way to produce a tablet of comparable spec to iPad for less
money? My understanding was that Apple owns enough of the require
infrastructure and produces at large enough scale that they Apple are
effectively impossible to undercut. Unless the Android tablet is sold for a
loss of course.

~~~
yumraj
You don't have to "make" it for less than Apple to be competitive, as long as
you're willing to live with a smaller margin. So, if iPad costs Apple $350 to
make to sell for $499 at a margin of $149, someone else can make it for $400
and sell it for $499 at a lower margin. Of course you have to take retailer's
margin and other things into account but my argument stands.

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rmah
Hmm, so assuming it's about on par with the Kindle Fire, we're looking at
about $200 to manufacture
([http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Kindle-
Fi...](http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/Amazon-Kindle-Fire-
Costs-$201-70-to-Manufacture.aspx)). Throw in an additional $50 for
marketing/distribution/shipping/design/overhead, and Google is looking at
losing $100 per unit if they price this thing at $150. Amazing the lengths
some people will go to to make a few dollars a month from ads.

~~~
wmf
I think the Nexus is about letting developers start working with next year's
version of Android, not about making money.

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chimeracoder
What does the Nexus brand mean anymore, though?

I'm not even trying to be sarcastic. I can't figure out why I should be
excited about this. Okay, Google's cooperating with some unnamed hardware
manufacturer and some unnamed wireless carrier to produce this device, but
what does that mean for me?

Nexus doesn't mean that it's produced with a given hardware manufacturer, or
even a given set of hardware (beyond the implication that it's generally the
best available at the time). For phones, it doesn't mean that it's tied to any
_given_ carrier, though it also doesn't necessarily mean that it can be used
between carriers either (thanks to the GSM/CDMA incompatibility). It doesn't
mean that the device won't have carrier bloatware on it. It doesn't mean that
the device will be the first to receive updates (for proof: take a look at the
angry Nexus S users who still don't have ICS). It doesn't even mean (anymore)
that the device will receive updates directly from Google! Since Google's now
apparently establishing a two-versions-per-year schedule for Android, those
once-valuable promises mean absolutely nothing.

I have a Galaxy Nexus, and I love it - I'm glad I upgraded. But I honestly
don't know what Google thinks the Nexus brand means - maybe they have some
idea, but they're not doing a great job of communicating it to even a tech-
savvy Android user. I'm glad that Google took the UI to the next level on ICS,
but unless they solve this problem very soon, Android's in trouble.

~~~
aprescott
I genuinely thought that all Nexus devices were stock Android without carrier
modifications. Is this not the case?

~~~
ktsmith
The galaxy nexus released to Verizon had no google wallet and added one or two
pieces of Verizon specific software including their backup assistant. I don't
believe either piece of vendor bloatware could be removed just disabled.

edit: The other pieces of software is My Verizon Mobile.

~~~
tsotha
My Verizon Mobile allows you to check your data usage. I don't think they can
really get away from that.

~~~
ktsmith
For those users with grandfathered unlimited accounts there is no need to care
about data usage. At the very least it should be optional and removable, which
it isn't.

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pacomerh
Personally I'd like to see a more developer oriented tablet approach from
google, something like what happened with G+ on the social network scene. Take
a little more risk for the hardcore users, because if you're targeting the
casual user you already lost to the Ipad.

~~~
ktsmith
There's a huge untapped market of casual users that are too price sensitive to
be buying the iPad. That's very likely the market a $100-250 tablet would be
aimed at. This is the same market that the kindle fire is already selling to.
In the case of the fire the hardware is mediocre and I would expect the same
from whatever this device is supposed to be.

~~~
cageface
There's also a market that considers the 10" form factor uncomfortably large.

Personally I think Apple is going to come to regret refusing to cater to users
that want a phone bigger than the iPhone or a tablet smaller than the iPad.

~~~
ktsmith
I would agree that there's a huge market for a smaller than 10" tablets and
the iPad specifically.

I'm not a big fan of the Kindle Fire (I own one) or the Blackberry playbook.
The 7" size is great for reading books but the weight is too heavy for
prolonged use in many sitting positions considering the size. I would expect
the smaller devices to be much lighter than they are.

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rbarooah
This seems like it might be a decent Android competitor to the iPod touch,
which is actually a pretty smart move.

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davidedicillo
The only way for Google to ship something like this at this price point is to
eat a big chunk of the production costs and sell it at a loss.

~~~
untog
Which I can almost- almost!- see them doing. The iPad utterly dominates the
tablet landspace, and Android tablets hasn't had anywhere near the success
Android phones have.

~~~
redthrowaway
>The iPad utterly dominates the tablet landspace

The reason for this is, I think, kind of obvious: everyone needs a phone. Most
people buying new phones opt for smartphones, and the cheapest smartphones are
droids. They serve the market.

Tablets, however, are a luxury item. They're not a necessity like a phone, nor
are they a productivity item in the same way a laptop is. The people who buy
them are buying them as luxury/status items, and that means Apple. Just as
those who buy phones for status buy iphones, so too do those who buy tablets
buy ipads.

The only people who buy luxury phones and tablets, but opt for android, tend
to be the technorati which is a much smaller market than Apple appeals to.

~~~
Steko
"Tablets, however, are a luxury item... The people who buy them are buying
them as luxury/status items, and that means Apple."

iPads replace laptops for many people which explodes your hypothesis. I've
never purchased a laptop in my life due to expense but I did buy an ipad. New
category =/= luxury.

Apple has won this category because (among other things) they were the first
successful entrant, their software is more refined, their ecosystem is better
and their distribution is leagues better.

~~~
cageface
But this just means that a laptop would also have been a luxury for you.
Apparently you don't _need_ a mobile computer or you would have bought one
before the tablet became an option.

Like a lot of people I'm working on the go all the time and as much as I like
tablets for certain things I _need_ a real laptop.

~~~
Steko
"But this just means that a laptop would also have been a luxury for you."

You're pivoting to a very circular definition of luxury here. A laptop is
something that would have been very useful to me, as it turns out it always
ended up one lower then other things on the budgetary priority. That doens't
make it a luxury/status item as you said 3 up.

Ultimately there's a contradiction in your claim that a laptop in general is
not a luxury/status good ("sign of affluence" - wiki) but a cheaper iPad,
which often functions as a laptop substitute, somehow is.

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xxqs
can't wait till we get a native Ubuntu tablet. Canonical says they are in the
talks with hw vendors.

