Amidst stiff competition from Apple and with Chrome OS-based tablets rolling out to the market, it may not be surprising that Google has omitted the tablet section from the official Android website.
For a number of years, Google has marketed Android tablets under its own branding, having started with the Asus-manufactured Nexus 7 around the middle of 2012. While initial models of the device were Wi-Fi only, an HSPA+ variant of the tablet with 32GB of onboard storage became available in October that same year. Since then, other first-party tablets have come and gone, including the Nexus 9 that was put out to pasture in 2016 and the more recent Pixel C ultimately removed from sale at the end of 2017.
While other manufacturers have soldiered on in the tablet section of the Android device market, it may seem that Google isn’t all that keen to continue promoting the category. Sometime in the last 24 hours, the entire tablet section on the Android website has been removed with the now-defunct direct link to the page now redirecting to the site’s homepage. However, the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine managed to capture a copy of the page before its removal.
Of course, if this is indeed a deliberate action on Google’s part, the move won’t prevent manufacturers such as Samsung and Lenovo from churning out Android tablets. However, it may not be surprising that Android-based tablets end up playing second fiddle to Chrome OS-based solutions occurs if recent split-screen support for Android apps on canary builds and Acer’s Chromebook Tab 10 announcement in March are anything to go by.
Source: Android Police via TechCrunch
