Nexus 7 sales could hit 8M by year's end, analyst says

Computerworld - Google could sell between six million and eight million of its $199 Nexus 7 tablets by year's end, according to a new estimate.

That's more than double the three million Google expected to sell by the end of 2012, after putting the device on sale in July and seeing the 16GB version sell-out briefly.

The estimate, based on projections using expected shipments of four million touch panels for the Nexus 7 in the third quarter 2012, was posted online at Tech-thoughts.net.

Google didn't comment on the estimate and a spokesman said that Google hasn't published any sales numbers for the device. Tech-thoughts tabbed sales for the third quarter alone at 2.9 million.

By comparison, the $199 Kindle Fire, which went on sale last fall, has sold about 5 million, according to an average of estimates by several analyst firms.

The analysis, authored by Sameer Singh, founder of Tech-thoughts, pegged the time it takes Asus to produce and deliver a Nexus 7 at 2.5 weeks. He said that after Google saw strong initial demand, "Google and Asus may have roughly doubled their [sales] estimates and cranked up the production volume."

A Gartner Inc. spokeswoman estimated the Nexus 7 so far has sold 1 million to 1.5 million units in about five weeks, based on reports from suppliers. Carolina Milanesi said the Tech-thoughts estimate of 6 million to 8 million Nexus 7 sales by year's end is higher than Gartner is expecting, but she didn't elaborate.

Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt's RSS feed. His email address is mhamblen@computerworld.com.

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