Nexus 9 was an 8.9-inch tablet that featured an NVIDIA Tegra K1 chipset with a Denver CPU. While the slate was one of the most powerful Android powered products at the time, sadly, the time has come for it to be pulled off the manufactured block. Slashgear has reported that HTC is no longer producing the stock Android running tablet, which means that the only tablet now running Google’s stock version of Android is Pixel C, and given its expensive price tag, we are not quite sure how long that is going to last either.
One of the biggest issues with Nexus 9 had absolutely nothing to do with its internals. In fact, Nexus 9 was the most powerful tablet running Google’s Android OS, that is when iPad Air 2 stepped into the fold and shattering the benchmarking scores. The issue with Nexus 9 had to do with the pricing strategy that HTC and Google came up with when the announcement was being made. For $399, you were getting the 16GB internal storage version, and just to remind you if you’ve forgotten, the tablet came without a storage card slot, so you had to be an expert when managing the internal memory.
The models that featured an LTE modem didn’t go easy on the consumers’ wallet either, which is one of the sole reasons why the device didn’t sell as well as it should have. Now that Nexus 9 has been moved away from the manufacturing table, what does the future of Android running tablets hold? Well, if companies are able to keep a lid on the pricing at such a point that customers do not feel cheated when they make a purchase, Android tablets still have a very comfortable position in a highly competitive market.
Manufacturers should take pointers from the Nexus 7 2013, which is regarded as of the best price/performance Android running tablets of all time. If the next Nexus is able to follow in the footsteps of Nexus 7, then you have a great all-round product that is just begging to be picked up.