Google to Sell Tablets on Its Own This Year
Google Inc., undaunted by a short-lived attempt to sell a smartphone on its own, is now pushing into Apple's iPad market. — The Internet search company is planning to market and sell tablets directly to consumers through an online store …
Context & Ripple Effects
The move completes a pivot Google signaled in February, when Android chief Andy Rubin said the company would 'double down' on Android tablets in 2012 after a first year in which iPad rivals barely registered. Selling through its own online store means Google stops relying on retail and carrier partners to put Android tablets in front of buyers — a channel it last tried with a directly sold smartphone, an effort that ended quickly.
Why push into hardware economics at all? A widely cited analysis pegged Google's Android take at roughly $10 per Android user in 2012, so controlling the device and its storefront is one way to capture more of the value chain. The story traveled fast — pickups ranged from TechCrunch to SlashGear within a day, with Business Insider framing it bluntly as a reaction to 'lousy' Android tablet sales against the iPad.
First-order effects
- Google gains direct control over tablet pricing, marketing, and inventory, competing head-to-head with the iPad in a market Apple has dominated rather than ceding shelf placement to third parties.
- The company absorbs the inventory and demand risk itself — the same structure that made its earlier direct-sold smartphone experiment short-lived.
Second-order effects
- Android hardware partners lose their intermediary role as Google becomes both platform licensor and retailer of its own tablets, sharpening questions about whose devices get preferential software treatment.
- Pricing pressure on the iPad side intensifies: a first-party Google tablet sold without retail markup gives consumers a cheaper alternative to Apple's lineup, forcing Apple to defend on price or differentiation.
Third-order effects
- If the model holds, consumer platforms consolidate around vertically integrated players who own the OS, the store, and the hardware sale — leaving licensees to compete for what remains of the open market.
- Direct device sales tie hardware margins to services monetization: with per-user software revenue thin by the cited estimates, the durable play is the storefront relationship, not the box.
The trend: Platform owners are shifting from licensing mobile software to partners toward owning the entire consumer relationship — device, storefront, and services — with Apple as the template Google is now following.