There's been lots of speculation over the past few months about just how successful the Nexus 7 Tablet has been. From various supplier reports and ad impression data the numbers have ranged from the low side of maybe 1 million total to as many as 2 million per month. But all these numbers were figured from second hand data and thus were taken with a large helping of salt. Well, it looks like we don't have to guess anymore. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that during yesterday's earnings report for Asustek, CFO David Chang finally let slip some hard numbers and it looks like the Nexus 7 has been more successful than most predictions and even better...it's gaining momentum. Here's the pertinent quote from Mr. Chang;
"At the beginning, it was, for instance, 500K units a month, then maybe 600, 700K. This latest month, it was close to 1 million."
Now keep in mind these numbers stem from late July/early August when the N7 first started taking preorders and started shipping up until now. Since we are just going into the holiday shopping season...and have two new higher capacity variants of the Nexus 7 in the 32GB and 32GB w/HSPA+ available, plus a new lower priced 16GB model at $199 it's pretty safe to say we should see sales stay at least as strong as the past month and possibly stronger. While we certainly have to take into consideration the competition of other 7 inch tablets like the Kindle Fire HD, Nook HD and of course Apple's new iPad Mini, the drastically increased purchases that consumers make for technology products during the last quarter of the year should more than make up for any additional competition. Especially since the iPad Mini has priced itself into a different category...$130 more than the comparative N7.
We could be looking at nearly 6 million Nexus 7s by the end of 2012. That would blow past the 3.9 million 4th quarter sales last year of the original Kindle Fire. Anyone out there buying a Nexus 7 for someone as a present so we can add to these numbers?
WSJ
