Google will launch the following days in San Francisco a tablet developed with Taiwanese group Asustek (Asus), with a price tag starting at $199, which places the product in direct competition with Kindle Fire from Amazon.com. The display will be 7-inch and will run a new version of Android, according to sources cited by Bloomberg. The new Nexus tablet will not compete directly with the iPad from Apple, which falls into a higher price category, but at 61% dominate the tablet market share this year. Google tries to find an entry in the tablet category, which could double the amount this year, to 118.9 million units sold, according to Gartner estimates.
Although Android operating system is installed on over 50% of the smartphones, the tablets with Google OS have less than half the market share of iPad on the tablet segment, which will be crowded this fall with a new powerful player the Surface tablet from Microsoft, based on Windows 8. “The tablet market is a big problem for Google at this time. They need a product that could compete with iPad”, an American analyst commented for Bloomberg. However, the reference price of $199 for the basic model of the Google tablet will not place the product in direct competition with iPad, with the latest version starting at $499. The market share around $200 is dominated the Kindle Fire from Amazon.com, running a highly modified version of Android. Contacted by Bloomberg, Google and Asus representatives refused to comment.
There are Android tablets already on the market from manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and Motorola Mobility, a company recently bought by Google for $12.5 billion. But Google is trying to monetize the Nexus brand on the tablets niche and apparently chose to start with a cheaper model, trying to attract customers with the latest version of Android at an affordable price. Research firm Gartner estimates that iPad tablet will remain dominant until 2016, although it will gradually lose market share. Currently, Apple tablet has more than 60% of market share which is expected to fall to 46% in 2016, according to Gartner. Meanwhile, Android’s market share could rise to 37% from 32% today.
Microsoft started from 0% on the tablet market in 2011 and could reach to 12% by 2016, according to Gartner projections, which are old and have not considered the Surface tablet, which the company presented last week in Redmond. Microsoft has chosen to enter into direct competition with iPad, rumors indicating that the Surface tablet will have prices comparable with products from Apple. Surface will be on the market in the second half, with Windows 8.
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