When Google chairman Eric Schmidt said last year that his company would release a tablet of the "highest quality," many assumed Google was building a device targeting the iPad. But now, DigiTimes, citing a source from Google's supply chain, says the company is actually building a 7-inch, sub-$200 Android tablet. That would put Google's hardware in direct competition with Amazon's similarly sized and priced Kindle Fire. Would Google be wise to challenge Amazon?
No. The device would be lousy or unprofitable: There's a big problem here, says MG Siegler at ParisLemon. Amazon, which sees its hardware merely as a delivery device for its massive content library, sells the Fire at a near break-even price. The Fire is of "significantly less quality than the iPad." If Google is going to undercut Amazon, "the hardware is either going to be shit — or Google is going to have to take a significant loss on each one sold." What's smart about that?
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