Asus, a growing but still-niche name in consumer electronics, may be getting some very prized Android designations.
First, according to Androidandme.com, Asus could well be the manufacturer that brings out the official “Nexus” branded tablet. The Nexus brand so far has been used in the smartphone market, and is the product line that Google has an active hand in developing.
Although the Nexus phones are seen as one streamlined line of devices, they’ve been made by different manufacturers and available on different carriers so Google doesn’t look like it’s playing favorites.
It’s been rumored for some time that Google was also toiling behing-the-scenes to come up with a Nexus-branded tablet, but the question of which manufacturer would get the honors has been largely mysterious.
The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Nexus tablet is expected to launch at around $200. Asus would be a good candidate since affordable electronics are what it specializes in.
At the same time, a report from Techradar.com is reporting that Asus will be the first company to launch an Android 5.0 Jelly Bean-powered smartphone. “Asus is very close to Google, so once they have Android 5.0 I think there will be a high possibility that we will be the first wave to offer the Jelly Bean update,” Asus corporate VP Benson Lin was quoted as saying.
Asus hasn’t been the poster child of Android, but it has shown dedicated support of the operating system and it wouldn’t surprise anyone to hear the relationship between Asus and Google is solid. This would, obviously, bring Asus’s presence in the Android world to a whole new level.
