Google has remained suspiciously quiet on the matter of sales numbers for its Nexus 7 tablet, especially given the positive critical reaction. Asustek has finally broken the silence on the subject to the Wall Street Journal: sales have been tracking up since launch and are now approaching a million units per month.
Asustek CFO David Chang told the WSJ that the company was selling—not just shipping—500,000 units a month initially, when the Nexus 7 launched in July. Figures bumped up to 600,000-700,000 in the following months, and in "this latest month," Google and Asus have sold close to one million units, said Chang.
This means the Nexus 7 is on track to be the most popular Android tablet ever. If we count the original Kindle Fire as a tablet (which we are loath to do), it's the Nexus 7's closest sales competitor in recent history, with an estimated 3 million or so sold last December alone.
Perhaps the next most successful brand is the Galaxy Tab from Samsung, which has a murky sales history. Samsung has claimed millions of sales per quarter in the past, but some court documents revealed during the Apple-Samsung trial showed the figures to be much lower. Meanwhile, Apple's iPad continues to find buyers, to the tune of 14 million in the third quarter of 2012 alone.
We'd attribute much of the original Kindle Fire's success to its appeal as a gift to new tablet adopters, and at the same $199 price point, the Nexus 7 may clean up in this niche as fall turns to winter and Asus bumps the storage tiers to 16 and 32 GB. But it will face competition, not only from the new Kindle Fires HD, but also the iPad mini.
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