Even though we knew about it before it was revealed, the Nexus 7 still managed to impress. The powerful 7-inch tablet coupled with a cheap price point is sure to attract a lot of first-time buyers and Amazon defectors to the Google fold. Regardless, it’s still a 7-inch tablet and Google needs something a little bigger to compete with Apple.
The always mysterious industry sources of DigiTimes have found that Wintek, the supplier of touch panels for the Nexus 7, shipped 500,000 touch panels in June. The company is expected to ship a total of 1 million touch panels by the end of July. So what does this have to do with anything?
Wintek is looking to be the largest touch panel supplier for Google especially when they begin shipping 10-inch touch panels. You heard that right, folks, DigiTimes’ sources claim that Google already has a Nexus 10 in the works. The Nexus 7 is obviously competing against the Kindle Fire, but a Nexus 10 would take on Apple at its own game.
Details are scarce at the moment. All we know is that Google plans to launch a 10-inch tablet in the future that will have touch panels provided by Wintek and AU Optronics. The involvement of AU Optronics is especially interesting since it’s a company that creates display technologies. Could we be seeing a retina display-like screen on the Nexus 10? We’ll have to wait to find out.
As with all reports from “industry sources,” take this with a grain of salt. Google won’t be launching the Nexus 7 until July and they obviously won’t be announcing anything else for the time being. The company will be watching how the Nexus 7 performs against the Kindle Fire to gauge how successful an assault on Apple would be.
Regardless, it totally makes sense for Google to be planning to launch a bigger tablet. While I think the Nexus 7 looks great, I wouldn’t mind a larger tablet from Google. I’m sure many people feel the same way.
