blog Some of you may remember about 18 months to two years ago it seemed like every manufacturer and their dog was determined to sell Australians their version of an Android tablet. ASUS, Acer, LG, Samsung and others launched so many 10″ tablets into the Australian market that at times it felt like a veritable flood.

Inevitably the flood ceased for a period, as consumers realised that the tablets were half-baked and weren’t as well-developed as Apple’s ubiquitous iPad. And so the flood ceased, at least temporarily, with most of the Android manufacturers going back to the drawing board. The tablets that were in Australia mostly saw dramatic price cuts and gradually went out of inventory.

Well, after that hiatus, this past couple of weeks the flood appears to have begun again — but in a smaller form factor, following the success of Google’s Nexus 7. Perhaps the most high-profile device to be flagged for imminent local launch is HP’s Slate 7 (pictured above), which CRN tells us will sell locally for $199, but there’s also ASUS’s MeMO Pad, also a 7″ device in a very similar form factor to the Nexus 7 (no big surprise, given that ASUS built the Nexus 7 for Google), and this afternoon Kogan joined the Android love-in with 8″ and 10″ tablet models starting at just $119.

We’re sure there are a few other 7″ Android tablet launches out there which we haven’t laid our eyes on, but frankly, we’re finding it hard to really care that much at this point, given the sheer amount of similar devices launching in Australia at the moment.

Now, we’d be the first to admit that Google finally cracked the Android tablet formula with its Nexus 7 device, and the Nexus 10 is also pretty damn solid. But isn’t it a bit silly for all of these other manufacturers to jump in on the bandwagon with their own devices? I mean, how much market is there really for 7″ Android tablets, and how much profit is there to be made on such units? It all feels a bit too much like following the crowd for this writer’s tastes, especially when you already have two units as solid as the Nexus 7 and iPad mini available.

What are your thoughts? Interested in buying one of the new flock of incoming smaller Android tablets? Or is it all a bit meh?

Image credit: HP

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1. Drew Guttadore
   Posted 28/02/2013 at 5:08 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Well, if you really are interested in a 7″ Android tablet, you’re in the right place! Will be hard to say long term how they go, but this sort of flood the market approach and see what sticks does seem to work! At least what sticks is generally the right stuff.
   I say enjoy it!

2. BuildFTTP
   Posted 28/02/2013 at 5:26 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I’ve got a $160 chinese 7′ android tablet and I like it. Battery lasts all day, it has very nice IPS screen and has impressive performance. I don’t really like android all that much though.

3. Djos
   Posted 28/02/2013 at 6:10 pm | Permalink | Reply

   I’ll prolly buy the hp slate 7″ for myself but only cause I work for hp and will prolly get a great epp deal on it. On the other hand I might just save up for an iPad mini to go with all existing apple kit in our house.

   • PointZeroOne
     Posted 28/02/2013 at 9:32 pm | Permalink | Reply

     hrm I think I can get something like that from HP as well through work, might be worth checking out.

4. Nich
   Posted 28/02/2013 at 8:44 pm | Permalink | Reply

   The same rhetoric applied to, say, the veritable flood of laptops and ultrabooks…?

   • PointZeroOne
     Posted 28/02/2013 at 9:32 pm | Permalink | Reply

     pretty much.

5. nonny-moose
   Posted 28/02/2013 at 9:47 pm | Permalink | Reply

   hmm

   im not up on whats good in tablet space as opposed to desktop chips and GPUs

   the Kogan efforts only are 10×7 for resolution.

   but these caught my eye:
   CPU
   Dual-core ARM Cortex A9 1.6GHz
   GPU
   Quad-core Mali400

   where do those sit vs the n7? the Nexus 1280×800(i think) is going to win on screen clarity. the cpu is 1.2? so the kogan A9 is probably slightly faster? and i have NFI about the Mali vs the Tegra.

   asides from that its only $20 more for double the GB, which is a smaller delta than the Nexus. the HDMI out and expandable memory are both items the N7 dont have and in a sense you can improve the screen res and storage that way. those two items actually diffrentiate from the N7 in a substantial sense so i think even if there will be a glut, its a pretty good effort from Kogan – tho id wait to see what else comes out of HP – i think they have several tabs coming this year besides the ones already announced.

   • nonny-moose
     Posted 28/02/2013 at 9:47 pm | Permalink | Reply

     that should be kogan 10″

6. pandyman
   Posted 01/03/2013 at 3:40 am | Permalink | Reply

   i got a kindle fire HD and rooted it the day it arrived :) now im patiently waiting for CM10.1 which is slowly being developed

7. Grizzli
   Posted 08/04/2013 at 10:47 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Great post, a good thing to note is that by going with the bigger companies you’re going to get software support and upgrades to your OS. I am not entirely sure if companies like Kogan are offering such support. Personally, I doubt it.

8. Grump3
   Posted 12/05/2013 at 9:20 pm | Permalink | Reply

   After comparing all the specs & prices of the more popular big name brands I chose the cheaper 7″ Ainol Flame some 8 months back. Similar, or more features than most & mine still performs flawlessly.

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