Will Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean solve Android's tablet problems?

Google’s Nexus 7 will eat iPad's lunch

Ed Burnette: This summer’s hottest gadget is the Nexus 7, which happens to be both one of the most powerful and least expensive tablets on the market. It’s no surprise that the 16GB model sold out almost immediately. At least one retailer is saying that they won’t get more until September.

Android’s tablet market share spiked over 40% when the Kindle Fire was introduced last year. While the Fire was limited, its form factor highlighted a need for tablets that could fit in your coat pocket or purse. The Nexus 7 is going to hit this niche even harder with prices less than half that of a new iPad. Unless Apple moves down-market with a smaller, cheaper iPad, Google’s Nexus 7 and devices like it are going to eat their lunch in this segment.

Jelly Bean (Android 4.1) adds game-changing features such as smooth, predictable framerates (Project Butter), and Google Now, Google's innovative personal assistant. Manufacturers that take advantage of Google's new Platform Development Kit will get a head start on upgrades, which means quicker adoption of new versions in the future. As a Google-supported device, the Nexus 7 will always be up to date.

An improvement, but not enough

Jason Perlow: The Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean 4.1 is Google's latest attempt to make Android a relevant player in the tablet scene, after several failed attempts to gain significant market share away from Apple's iPad with previous platform releases and the participation of several OEMs.

While the Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean introduce significant improvements over previous tablet and OS incarnations, such as increased performance (Project Butter) and better platform stablity, Android tablets fundamentally have many of the same problems that have plagued the platform since its introduction.

These include a more complex and inconsistent user interface when compared with iOS, a lack of tablet optimized applications, and despite the aggressive pricing on the 7" Nexus 7, a wide proliferation of expensive OEM full-sized tablet hardware is still sitting in the distributor and retail channel.

Lastly, the Nexus 7 and Jelly Bean do absolutely nothing to resolve the OEM tablet OS software upgrade issues which have been an inescapable quagmire for the Android manufacturer ecosystem since its inception. OEMs are just barely getting out of their Honeycomb to Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade rut, and have little or no plans to upgrade current products in the channel to Jelly Bean.