New Asus-made Google Nexus 7 coming in July with Qualcomm CPU

This definitely isn’t the first time we’ve heard about the next Nexus 7 tablet switching from an Nvidia chipset to one made by Qualcomm. In fact, it’s not even the second time. It’s the third.
Today, though, the info comes from Reuters and its sources (two in this case), and that makes the news just a teeny tiny bit more believable than what unnamed “supply chain sources” usually claim.

So here’s the skinny. There will be a new Nexus 7, and it will be released “around July”. It will be made by Asus once more. It will come with an unidentified (as of yet) Qualcomm chipset, narrower bezels, and and a higher screen resolution than its predecessor.

So far we haven’t seen any tablet with a higher resolution than 1,280×800 (what’s employed in the existing Nexus 7) not come with a Full HD touchscreen. Because of the aspect ratio, Android tablets have so far gone with 1,920×1,200, so perhaps that’s what we should expect from the next iteration of Google’s smallest tablet.
The narrower bezels make sense in the context of the iPad Mini, launched late last year with significantly thinner bezels (at least on two sides) than competing products such as the Nexus 7.
The Qualcomm chipset was apparently chosen by Asus and Google instead of an Nvidia-made offering “for power reasons”, whatever that may mean. Is the Qualcomm CPU going to be more battery-friendly? Or is it simply more powerful? That phrase leaves this up for debate, but whatever the reason, after so many rumors all claiming a Qualcomm chip will be inside the next Nexus 7, we tend to believe that this will indeed be the case.
Pricing for the new tablet hasn’t been determined yet. One of the aforementioned sources speculated that Google may opt to have a starter price of $199 for the new tablet, while the existing Nexus 7 would be discounted below that and still kept on sale. Ever since last year when it launched, the current Nexus 7 has started at the same $199 price point. Taking it lower, perhaps to $149 or even $99, would certainly help Google sell millions more.
Another strategy could be pricing the new device at $149 and simply discontinuing the old one. But nothing has been decided yet, so let’s keep an open mind about this.
Google apparently plans on selling over 8 million new Nexus 7s in the latter half of this year. Over the same period last year, Google and Asus managed to sell around 4.6 million Nexus 7s, according to one analyst. So Google certainly seems confident in the new tablet’s success.