Sources claim Google Nexus tablet could undercut Amazon Kindle Fire

The rumor mills have been churning hard as of late, and the most recent output seems to be centered around the possibility of Google releasing a home-grown Nexus tablet to bring life into the floundering Android tablet space. The latest rumors say that Google could release the tablet at a $199 price point, competing squarely in the Amazon Kindle Fire's arena. Or maybe it will be released at $149, depending on who you believe.
Android and Me claims that an employee from a U.S. supply chain company says the rumored 7-inch tablet will cost $149, while The Verge claims to have sources that say it will be $199. Both say that it is likely that the tablet will be based on the 7-inch ASUS MeMo 370T that was briefly shown off at CES earlier this year, though the quad-core Tegra 3 processor inside may have been swapped for a lower spec chip to trim costs. It is expected that a Nexus tablet from Google will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (or even the next version of Android) without any customizations from the manufacturer, just like how Android on Google's Nexus smartphones has been presented thus far.
Neither Android and Me nor The Verge provided any reliable timeline for when Google might trot out this new Nexus tablet, but some speculate that it could happen at the Google I/O developer conference this summer.
Regardless of whether or not Google is actually planning to launch a Nexus tablet, it is hard to see how this will have a dramatic effect on the Android tablet market as a whole. Nexus devices have always had strong hardware chops, but hardware has never been an issue with Android tablets. Rather, as pointed out by Sascha Segan in this report from PCMag, software and apps have been their downfall thus far, and a Nexus tablet from Google is not likely to change that. Without the app ecosystem, the best hardware in the world is virtually useless, and until Google does something about the apps, Android tablets are likely to continue on their path of irrelevance.