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Google unleashes new tablet tactics

Google has changed its strategy for fighting the tablet wars with the Nexus 7, a seven inch tablet closely resembling Amazon’s Kindle Fire

The search giant unveiled the tablet at its San Francisco I/O developers conference. It has been designed by Google, built by Taiwan-based Asus and is expected to retail for $199.

The device will go on sale in the next week from the Google Play store and will begin shipping in July. It weighs in at approximately 340g, will run on the Android Jelly Bean 4.1 operating system and feature an Nvidia Tegra 3 processor.

The Nexus 7’s design is very different from the company’s previous attempt to break into the tablet market with the Samsung Galaxy Tab which was revealed at last year’s conference. The Samsung device has a strong resemblance to Apple’s iPad, to the point that Apple won an injunction earlier this week to prevent the device being sold in the US.

The Nexus 7 has been compared to the Kindle Fire which launched at the end of last year and has proved very successful in the US. The Fire runs a heavily modified version of Google’s open source Android operating system.

Last week, Microsoft made its entry into the tablet arena with its Surface tablets running a variation of Windows Phone and a full version of Windows 8. Microsoft’s devices are designed as higher end devices with a higher price tag to match, starting at $499.

David Hing, London