Google has had nothing but difficulty in trying to make its tablets a success over the past few years. Now, after seeing awful sales with last year’s Pixel Slate, the Search giant is exiting the tablet market entirely.
The company’s tablets were certainly not bad. The Pixel-C was a neat device, and the Pixel Slate had some potential. However, neither found their target audience. As a final nail in the coffin, both had extreme trouble providing value, especially for the asking price.
There have been rumors that Google was working on two additional tablets, and while that was true, all development on those has been shelved for the time being. Here’s the official announcement from Google’s Senior Vice President of Devices & Services at Google, via Twitter:
“Hey, it’s true…Google’s HARDWARE team will be solely focused on building laptops moving forward, but make no mistake, Android & Chrome OS teams are 100% committed for the long-run on working with our partners on tablets for all segments of the market (consumer, enterprise, edu)”
So while Google’s current tablet projects have been cancelled, and employees working on Google’s tablets have been moved to other team, the company still plans to support the Pixel Slate long-term.
One thing’s for certain: Apple seems to have the tablet market almost cornered, as few manufacturers have been able to offer the value that Apple does in that part of the market.