During a presentation at the company’s annual developer conference, Google said ASUS will manufacture the Nexus 7 tablet. The decision is a snub for Motorola, a tablet and smartphone Company that Google acquired earlier this year.The Google Nexus 7 tablet has been described as “an ideal device for reading books,” by Google engineering director Chris Yerga. The device is being aimed at the Amazon Kindle which is being sold by Dick Smith and Big W in Australia.
Observers said the new device is on par with Amazon’s Kindle Fire device and costs significantly less than Apple’s cheapest iPad tablet.
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The tablet will run Google’s new Android Jelly Bean OS which delivered improved speech recognition capability. That software will be released next month, the company said.
Google executives said that the device will easily stream music movies and TV shows and can be connected to a TV.
Google has also released the Nexus Q. The Wall Street Journal said that the new device will compete with other home-entertainment streaming devices, such as Apple TV, reflecting Google’s effort to push further into the consumer electronics business, beyond mobile devices.
The Nexus Q will be available for $299, Google said. It is designed to stream entertainment from Play and Google’s YouTube video service to various Android devices.
Google said some 400 million Android devices now have been activated. The new release of the software is “the fastest and smoothest version of Android yet,” Google Android Product Management Director Hugo Barra said.
