Taking on their main rival in the Apple iPad as well as Amazon's Kindle, Microsoft's Surface tablet is also in Google's cross-hairs.
The price range of £159 (8GB) and £199 (16GB) puts the tablet right in the ballpark of their competitors, and will be the first Android device to run their new 'JellyBean' operating system Android 4.0. A small tablet at seven inches and a 1.2-megapixel camera, its quad-core processor make it ideal for games and video content - which will be available from the ever-growing Google Play store.
Android team head Hugo Bara said at Google’s developers’ event in San Francisco: “We wanted to design a best-of Google experience optimised around the content available at Google Play. It has always been a goal of the Nexus programme to provide you with the best-of Google experience the way Google envisions it.”
Salman Chaudhry, analyst at the research firm Context, said: "Overall, we shouldn't expect this particular tablet to take on the iPad despite Google's efforts to differentiate it. Lessons haven't been learnt from previous tablet failures. The 7in tablets – RIM PlayBook, HTC Flyer – have been by and large unsuccessful, and are only really suitable for content consumption.
"Against this backdrop, strategy needs to be more aligned towards the Kindle Fire's purely 'content-consumption' orientated device. However, if Google is looking to take a bite out of Amazon's share, it will find that it's competing against a much more well-developed entertainment-orientated platform with huge, well-organised catalogues of books and media content."
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