The slate’s price tag is still not competitive enough

Apr 6, 2012 09:33 GMT  ·  By

Rumors on Google’s own tablet still continue to pour in, but nothing is certain for the moment. Lots of reports are citing “sources close to the matter” when revealing info regarding the price, availability and specs of the slate.

Today, we have a new set of details that are coming from another “source close to the project.” The Verge claims that Google decided to push the launch of the tablet to July “due to effort to cut price.”

Keep in mind that the Google tablet was initially rumored to be released in May, but the search giant took into consideration the fact that the slate is not yet competitive enough when it comes to price.

It appears that the tablet is currently priced at $249 (190 EUR), which is way higher than prices suggested by earlier reports, which indicated that Google aimed for a price in the range of $149 (115 EUR) to $199 (150 EUR) for its device.

In addition, Google would have more time to further tweak the tablet and make some design changes, in order to be able to lower its price, thus making it more competitive in comparison with Amazon’s Kindle Fire 7-inch tablet.

Google is reportedly working with Asus to build this tablet, but the former might ink new partnerships for other tablets with important brands, including Samsung, HTC or LG.

According to the latest hearsay, the Google tablet features a 7-inch capacitive touchscreen display, an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor and Wi-Fi support. Reports claim that the tablet would not come with 3G support, though the information is not confirmed yet.

Software-wise, there’s a large debate on whether or not the tablet will be powered by the upcoming Android 5.0 Jelly Bean operating system.

We doubt that this would be possible, given the fact that the 7-inch tablet has been entirely designed to work with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich platform.