Eric Schmidt was present in Tokyo today to demo the Nexus 7 tablet to the Japanese audience, on the occasion of the local debut of the device. The slate is now available in the Play Store starting at 19,800 yen, which means about $254 for the 16 GB model. Google Play Books also launched in Japan with a decent collection of local content.
Schmidt is excited about the Japanese market, saying that it has the third highest number of Google Play installs in the world. Also, know that at 75% customers in Japan make more purchases on their devices than anyone else. Starting with October 2nd, the cheap quad core 7 inch slate will be available at big Japanese retailers like Bic Camera, Yodobashi Camera and Joshin. Google is expanding beyond its homeland and after the recent push in Europe, it’s now entering Asia.
This expansion is where Apple rules and Amazon doesn’t quite handle the situation, so Google has to match the Apple success this time. Japan is a very big market both for Play Books and the Google tablet. It has a large affluent population that’s difficult to conquer when it comes to ebooks. Amazon had plans to launch its Kindle products in Japan, but we’ve seen nothing so far. They may be fearing the local Kobo Touch, launched by Rakuten. However, you should know that Japan is not actually that fond of Google, since Yahoo Japan is the top spot search engine.
