Ahead of the Google I/O event scheduled for June 25 in San Francisco, California, reports and speculation around the Google Nexus 8 tablet is rife. The upcoming Google Nexus 8 tablet is reportedly being built by HTC. It is worth noting that, Asus partnered with the search giant to build several successful Nexus devices for Google in the past.

Nexus 8

There are couple of instances where reference to Nexus 8 was sighted in Chromium Code Reviews forum in the past few weeks. This establishes the existence and the arrival of the device. The Nexus 8 is expected to be launched in July 2014.

Limited Features

The upcoming Nexus 8 tablet will have an 8.9 inches display, expected to be priced as a 'premium' device. Rhoda Alexander, director at IHS Technology claimed that the new tablet will be in production from July or August 2014. This cements the fact that the shipment of the device will not materialise until the end of 2014.

The tablet will run on the latest Android OS, either v4.5 or v5.0. The search giant is reportedly planning to ditch its chip manufacturer Qualcomm for its upcoming Nexus device. Many speculations point out that Google might opt for either an Intel or NVIDIA SoC.

According to reports, the upcoming tablet could house a 5 MP rear-facing camera unit and a 1.3 MP front-facing camera.

Why Nexus 10 2 was Axed?

As far as the history of the sales goes, the search giant Google has been quite lucky and the feedback for their Nexus products like the Nexus 4 and Nexus 5 smartphones have been positive and well-received. Notably, the Nexus 7 did enjoy the same warm welcome as well.

Nevertheless, the Nexus 10, on the other hand, did not live up to the expectations in the sales arena when compared to other Nexus products.

According to Know Your Mobile, Benedict Evans, an analyst predicted that - out of the 6.8 million (approximate figure) Nexus devices sold so far, only about 680,000 devices could be tagged as Nexus 10. He backed his prediction based on associating active Android user data and information from Google.

Even though the Nexus 10 was fielded as a business friendly device, the sales figures did not come out favorably for Google to pursue the next-generation variant of the Nexus 10 brand.