Asus and Google making steady inroads on iPad tablet market

Asus has revealed that it is now shipping upwards of 1 million Nexus 7 tablets a month, reports the Wall Street Journal. It is the first insight into just how well the Nexus 7 tablet is faring, although Google has yet to reveal its official sales figures for the device. On launch the Nexus 7 quickly sold out of its initial product run, with its $199 starting price being one of its main attractions.

“At the beginning, it was, for instance, 500K units a month, then maybe 600, 700K. This latest month, it was close to 1 million,” Asus’ Chief Financial Officer David Chang told the Wall Street Journal. This is much higher than industry extrapolations that used Google’s third quarter earnings to estimate that it had sold around 1 million Nexus 7 tablets in total for the quarter.

While the signs are encouraging for Google in its first foray into the tablet space with its first co-branded Nexus tablet, Nexus 7 sales are still dwarfed by the iPad. Strategy Analytics estimates that of the 25 million tablets sold globally in the last quarter, Apple sold 14 million of these. Further, Apple’s new iPad mini, although priced higher than the Google competition, is expected to further reinforce Apple’s dominant market position.

However, Google is not standing still either. It recently unveiled its first 10-inch Nexus, the Nexus 10, with which it is aiming to tackle Apple’s second- and fourth-generation iPads. The Nexus 10 is manufactured by Samsung and offers a higher dpi display than the Retina display in the high-end iPad, while it starts at just $399 for a 16GB model. A 32GB model is the highest capacity iteration, while there is no sign that Google will offer a cellular-enabled version as it seeks to keep the cost down, and avoid undercutting high-end Android tablets made by its partners.

By Electronista Staff

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computers, Google, iPad, Nexus 7, Nexus 10