Can we blame the old Nexus 7 for us not having the new one already? It sounds strange, but it might be true. Turns out there’s a report from DigiTimes, which doesn’t have the best track record for rumors, claiming that ASUS wanted to ship the new generation of Nexus 7 back in May but Google was afraid that the remaining stock of the old model would be an issue and wanted to clear it before announcing the new model. Asus wanted an earlier launch to boost its sales numbers for the quarter.
Obviously, this could all be true since we haven’t seen the new Nexus 7 announced at the Google I/O event but the leaks of the device have been flowing for quite some time now, meaning the tablet already existed at the time of the event. Most of us thought that Google didn’t announced any hardware because they wanted to focus on the developers instead of making it a consumer event and while that might be true, the stock issue seems like a plausible explanation for the lack of announcement.
The new model should come along quickly, it will most likely be announced tomorrow at Google’s event with Sundar Pichai along with Android 4.3, we’ve seen retailers reduced the price of the current model so the timing seems correct this time.
Asus wants to ship 12 million tablet by the end of the year, and having shipped 5.7 million in the first half, they need to ship 6.3 million more, delaying the launch of the new Nexus 7 might make Asus miss their expectation, but clearing stock of the first generation makes more sense for Google, nobody will buy the old model with the new one in the street and with the low price of $229 like we’ve seen in the Best Buy ad.
This is an unconfirmed rumor so we’re taking it with a grain of salt, it certainly makes sense in the context of what happened, but Google might have delayed the new generation Nexus 7 just to launch it along Android 4.3, which wasn’t ready at Google I/O back in May.
We’ll find out more tomorrow so be sure to check the site for the news coming out of Google’s event.