It appears there’s going to be a bit of disappointment among eager Pinoy tech junkies who are hoping to score the quad core Nexus 7 on the cheap. For one thing, it’s going to arrive around late August. Another thing is that it’s only going to come in the 16Gb variant, which is obviously more expensive than the 8Gb variant. But just how expensive is it going to be? Well, according to the popular local tech blog, YugaTech, it will likely retail for Php15k after taxes, but that’s really just speculation since local pricing wasn’t actually discussed. Still, that sucks in a major kind of way, considering the price of the Nexus 7 stateside is supposed to be $249 or Php10,458 at $1=Php42 conversion. That’s Php5k more than I was expecting to pay for just the 8Gb variant.
Questions You Might be Asking
So why is it just the 16Gb version that’s arriving here? It’s likely because the internal storage is non-expandable, which would really limit the amount of content you could fit on the device at any one time without having to connect to a computer. Also, the profit margins are likely much larger, percentage wise, over the 8Gb variant.
And how the heck did $249 become Php15,000 after conversion? Well, again it’s just speculation, but aside from VAT that would be imposed, there would also be import duties to be considered. Customs tax is usually quite high and can add on around 30% to the final retail price of anything that isn’t locally manufactured.
Should early adopters be worried about any of this? Well, not really. Although YugaTech’s sources about the August release date are reported to be reliable, no retail price was actually mentioned. And even if the Philippine SRP is too expensive, there are always alternatives to get it for cheap, such as through gray market sellers or relatives in the States who can purchase the Nexus 7 for you and then ship them to you to avoid the customs tax.
Affordable Alternatives If You Can’t Wait or Don’t Care About Quad Core
If you can’t wait until late August, there’s actually some decent 7 inch Android alternatives that are already available locally and have been for a while. The most affordable branded 7 incher is the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 WiFi -only variant, which you can get for as low as Php12-13k with a full manufacturer’s warranty. While it isn’t Jelly Bean and has only 2 cores rather than 4, that price point is tough to beat. Samsung cut some other corners too, such as front and rear cameras, but you still end up with a rather solid tablet that can smoothly run just about any app you throw at it.
If you want to go deeper into budget tablet territory, one of the standouts is the Ainol Aurora. While it only has a single core, it features a much better IPS display compared to other popular budget tablets out there. Sure, the selling price (Php8,500-9,000 for the 16Gb variant) is more expensive than the typical budget tablet, but you get a great combination of a 1Ghz CPU, 1Gb RAM and an awesome IPS display.
Sources: YugaTech, Widget City Hub and CMK Cellphones
The 15k mark would be reasonable already if we try to consider that the $249 offering by google would reach $285 after all taxes and delivery fee charged by google, yes thats right its not $249 upon checkout since local sales tax is added and a delivery fee of $13.99, so if the grey market sellers would sell it here i doubt if they can it lower than 15k mark considering the tax and freight charges going in the Philippines shall be added upon its importation
Yeah, I agree the 15k price tag is still reasonable, assuming that’s what it will be. It would still have been nice to have the cheaper 8Gb version as an option, although the non-expandable storage would become an issue.