Docking station for Nexus 7 appears on Asus Japan website

The Nexus 7 is one of those devices that sell like hot cakes, and its manufacturer, Asus, has come out with accessories that it hopes would further increase sales. The latest accessory unveiled by Asus happens to be a docking station that makes it easier to browse the Internet or watch movies. The dock would be priced around 3,480 yen, which translates to around Rs 2,277, and is expected to go on sale this month.

As of now, this accessory has been teased only on Asus’ Japan website, and there is currently no information on its availability in the rest of the world.

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New docking station from Asus revealed

The docking station comes equipped with connectivity options such as a micro USB and a 3.5 mm audio jack. The docking station measures 65 x 65.1 x 219 mm for the height, width and depth respectively. The weight of this Nexus 7 accessory is 280 g.

Asus claims that there is no need to update the device for it to be compatible with the docking station. This means that it will run just fine on the platform it had been launched with, which is Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

We mentioned earlier that the Nexus 7 was a hot-selling tablet and a recent report states that the sales have been so good that Taiwanese suppliers believe that Asus will ship over five million units of the Nexus 7 by the end of 2012.

In the second quarter, Google expected to achieve shipments of 2.5 million Nexus 7 tablets in 2012. However, Taiwan-based suppliers believe that the cumulative shipment volume in 2012 will reach five million units based on orders released, a report by Digitimes states.

Digitimes reports, “While international vendors usually place orders for shipments to peak in October and November to meet year-end peak demand beginning in late November, Nexus 7 shipments are expected to remain at a high level of 700,000-1,000,000 units in both November and December, the sources pointed out.”

These figures may come as no surprise as this tablet is eating into Apple’s tablet market. Asus recently revealed that sales of the Nexus 7 were nearing one million devices within a month of launch. Asus executives said the 7-inch tablet has created a big buzz this year with its low starting price of $199, but both Google and Asustek have been careful about not divulging actual sales figures. In a research note, Piper Jaffray’s analyst Gene Munster stated, “We believe Google’s Other Income of $666 suggests that Google likely sold 800k-1m Nexus 7s in Q3. Excluding our estimated Nexus 7 impact, core net revenues would have been up 2.5 percent q/q vs. 4.7 percent”

Google and Asus recently released another Nexus 7 variant that comes with HSPA+ connectivity. The new Nexus 7 is available in 16 GB and 32 GB versions; the 16 GB version will cost $199, which converts to roughly Rs 10,761, while the 32 GB version will cost $249, approximately Rs 13,465. The HSPA+-enabled Nexus 7 will be able to operate on more than 200 GSM providers around the world.

However, as of now, only the 16 GB Nexus 7 is available in India, but it is selling at a much higher price than in the US. The tablet is available officially for Rs 19,999 for the 16 GB version, which is almost double its cost in the US.

As for the specifications, Google’s Eric Schmidt said last year that the Nexus 7 would be a high quality tablet, and Google has delivered on all counts. This model comes equipped with a 7-inch IPS display that boasts of a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, and is powered by a 1.3 GHz quad-core Tegra 3 chip. It has a 1 GB of RAM, which should enable the tablet to match up with the best in the business. Google has touted it as a serious gaming device as it brings a 12-core Nvidia GeForce GPU to the fray too.