Asustek will benefit a lot from partnering with Google and building the Nexus 7 tablet. Apparently, they will reach the 2012 target shipments of 3.0 million tablet PCs, mostly thanks to the Nexus 7. I don’t doubt that top notch devices such as the Pad 300 or the Infinity Pad will contribute to that number, but the Nexus tablet is the one that will generate most shipments.
The Taiwanese tablet maker already shipped 1.4 million units in the first half of this year and to decide if they’ll reach the 3 million mark we’ll have to see what sales the Nexus 7 generates. Originally Asustek announced that it expected to ship 1.4 million slates in Q2 alone, but only shipped 800k, because of the shipments delay of the Nexus 7, that was supposed to be announced earlier. The info comes from the usual inside sources and sounds pretty plausible, if you ask me.
As you probably know already, ASUS cancelled the MeMO 370T quad core 7 inch affordable tablet, that was actually the starting point of the Nexus 7. The low price of $199 applied to the ASUS Google tablet will appeal to a lot of people and I expect it to give the Kindle Fire a run for its money. The interesting thing here is that without wanting to, this product will also cannibalize sales of other ASUS tablets, with bigger diagonals and prices. I have a feeling that 3 million units is a modest expectation and that they’ll do better…
