Hurricane Sandy dealt a major blow to Google's hope to take the tech world by storm on Monday with its Android event.
As a result, Google cancelled its big Android event, which was set to be held in New York City.
Google said on Sunday in an e-mailed statement to reporters that it was cancelling the event, without divulging the new launch date. It said that it would let reporters know as soon as the event was rescheduled.
Google's event was planned to compete with Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 event taking place in San Francisco the same day.
The company was expected to show off news Nexus tablets — in both 7- and new 10-inch varieties — and a Nexus 4 smartphone. It was also expected to show off its latest Android 4.2 operating system.
With Apple launching mini iPad and Microsoft's Surface off to a rocky start, this holiday season is going to see intense competition between the vendors.
Quoting research firm Forrester, New York Times reported that Google, Apple's fiercest competitor, recently released its 7-inch Nexus 7 tablet for $200 (Dh734). And Amazon recently introduced seven new Kindles, including a 7-inch tablet for $160 and an 8.9-inch tablet for $300.
Barnes and Noble's Nook tablet, which starts at $200, has also sold well. Combined, the three companies have sold about 15 million of these smaller, cheaper tablets, according to estimates by Forrester.
“Apple still dominates the market with 100 million iPads sold to date. But that could have been 15 million more tablets if it had had a smaller, cheaper version of the iPad on the market earlier,” said Sarah Rotman Epps, a Forrester analyst told New York Times.
Leaked photos on technology blogs suggest the tablet includes a dual-core 1.7GHz Samsung Exynos CPU, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 10.1-inch display with a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels, NFC, and a 5-megapixel rear camera. Google is expected to sell the 32-GB Nexus 7 for $249.
The 16-GB Nexus 7, which currently sells at that price, is expected to be brought down to $199. The 8-GB Nexus 7 is expected to either be cut or have its price lowered as well.
Various reports also say Google is readying a tablet to sell at $99 that would undercut its competitors. This could be a price-reduced 8-GB Nexus 7, something different altogether or nothing at all. There isn't much detail on this product other than rumours that it might happen.
Research firm Gartner has published a report claiming Microsoft's new Windows RT platform will have a two per cent share of the tablet market by the end of 2012 and this will only increase to five per cent by the end of 2013.
The figures predict sales of 2.3 million Windows RT devices in the closing months of 2012, while in the whole of 2013 it is estimated around 9.3 million devices will be sold.
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