10-inch Android tablets were “overpriced and underpowered” says Google

Google has shed a little more detail on how and why it was able pitch the new Nexus 10 tablet, made by Samsung, at such a competitive price.

The Nexus 10 goes on sale from 13 November at £319 for the 16GB edition ($399 in the US).  

Having made a splash with the Nexus 7, Google released a refreshed Nexus 7 tablet alongside the smaller Nexus 4 smartphone and bigger Google Nexus 10 tablet, each from different manufacturers.

Speaking to The New York Times, Google's director of business development for Android, John Lagerling, explained that Google partners with different hardware companies to find the best match for its plans at the time, such as LG with the Nexus 4 and Asus with the Nexus 7.

“It’s not so much fairness as it is to sort of work with partners who happen to be in good ‘phase match’ with us in what we’re trying to do.” he said. “So Samsung just happens to be in a good phase match on a high-end display, which is exactly what we wanted to do at a low cost. LG had a good phase match with the hardware they were working on. Asus as well. It’s just more about the timing being right.”

He added, “We did really well with the Nexus 7, I feel, because nobody really pushed the envelope with seven-inch in terms of price and performance. It really proved that category. We felt the 10-inch category was overpriced and underpowered, and we wanted to see what we could do for that from our perspective.”


Lagerling went on to reiterate that Motorola would be treated like any other hardware partner, despite now being owned by Google. “They would bid on doing a Nexus device just like any other company. The way I understand it is, it’s mostly about the patents. There are players in the industry who were unhappy about more competitive pricing for the consumers. They want to keep the prices high, they want to force the price to be so high that operators have to subsidize the devices very highly. They want higher margins, they want to charge more for software.”

Do the prices of the Nexus Android products make them better value, or are they missing something that other brands offer? Tell us what you think on the Trusted Reviews Twitter and Facebook feeds or via the comments boxes below.

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