Google unveils new Nexus 7 tablet after iPad sales sink

The new Nexus 7 gets a big upgrade. Meanwhile, iPad sales are slipping...

Behold: the new Nexus 7 has arrived. It comes in three versions: 16GB, 32GB, and a 32GB LTE model, and all three are available for less than $350. Gird your loins, Apple…

Google unveiled its new super-cheap tablet along with several other new products Wednesday.

The new Nexus 7 tablet is two millimeters thinner than the original, and the side bezel has been reduced by nearly three millimeters on each side. The resolution has gotten a big new upgrade at 1920x1200 from 1280x800. Additionally, the new display features a 30% wider range of colors. It comes with dual speakers, a 1.2 megapixel camera on the front and a 5 megapixel camera on the back.

The tablet has a 1.5Ghz quad-core Snapdragon S4 pro CPU, along with 2GB of RAM. Battery life is roughly equivalent to its competitors with nine hours of HD video playback and 10 hours of Web browsing. By comparison, the Kindle Fire comes with a 1.2Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM, and nine hours of battery life.

The new Nexus 7 is a pretty big upgrade from last year’s model, which came with only one front-facing camera, 1GB of memory, and 3G optional connectivity. But will it be able to compete with the iPad mini, which comes with Apple’s A5 chip and 10 hours of battery life?

Aaaaand, it’s the first device that Google is shipping with Android 4.3, the new version of Jelly Bean. What does Android 4.3 come with, you ask? Why, it comes with faster user switching, Bluetooth Smart, background Wifi location, easier text input, restricted profiles for young’uns, dial pad autocomplete, more language support, and more.

And, interestingly, at launch, Google will have a collection of textbooks from all five major publishing houses, which can be purchased or rented for six months at a time.

Google’s unveiling event came one day after Apple revealed surprisingly sluggish iPad sales—only 14.6 million sold in the June quarter, compared to 17 million sold in the same quarter last year. Apple's case isn't helped by the fact that all three versions of the new Nexus 7 tablet are available for less than $350. The 16GB Wifi Nexus 7 is available for just $229. 

Investors have been hopeful that purchases of lower priced tablets would lead to upgrades to higher priced iPads, but that doesn’t seem to be the case, said BTIG analyst Walter Piecyk, in a research note Wednesday morning. A survey from CivicScience reveals that fewer than 15% of consumers who purchase a lower priced tablet plan to upgrade.

But Piecyk remains optimistic for Apple, noting that 65% of the 2300 respondents said they still hadn’t purchased a tablet.

“We continue to be big believers in this product and given the personalization of its use, we believe it will correlate more closely to population penetration than household penetration,” said Piecyk.

Image source: financialpost.com