In the wake of last week’s Google I/O developer’s conference, the search giant continues to kill off older projects. The latest to get the axe is the Nexus 9 tablet.
A spokesperson for HTC, the Taiwanese company that manufactured the last run of Nexus devices for Google, told CNet that it has ceased manufacturing the 9-inch tablet. A Google spokesperson confirmed this information to the Daily Dot, stating that the company is out of stock of the Nexus 9 and “don’t have plans to restock.”
After debuting in late 2014, the flagship tablet disappeared from the Google Play store last month. Some tablets are still available through HTC, but it appears those are the last of the devices.
The death of the Nexus 9 perhaps shouldn’t be surprising; it never quite garnered the praise that its smaller brethren, the Asus-made Nexus 7, received.
Part of the failure of the 9 was likely due to its price point. It was a premium tablet that sported a powerful 64-bit NVIDIA Tegra processor and dual front-facing speakers, which jacked up the retail cost to $400. It also came with its fair share of common issues that caused users problems.
More than anything, though the Nexus 9 was victim of timing. While tablet ownership in the United States skyrocketed between the years of 2010 and 2014, from just four percent to 42 percent, it has stagnated ever since. Ownership figures grew just three percent, from 42 to 45, between 2014 and 2015, the timeframe during which the Nexus debuted.
With the discontinuation of the Nexus 9, Google has all but officially exited the tablet game. The lone “tablet” remaining in the Google Play store is the Pixel C, a hybrid-type device that is accompanied by a keyboard, more in the style of a Windows Surface Pro or iPad Pro.
Earlier this week, Google also put an end to its Nexus Player, an often forgotten TV set-top box powered by Android TV that debuted in 2014.
H/T CNet
