It looks like we’ve got a bona-fide goose chase on our hands. On the subject of the often-rumored Nexus Tablet, we’d already heard tell that it’d be made by Asus, manufactured in April, use the popular 7-inch form factor/$200 price tag, and that it would be dubbed the “Google Play”. The last one might just be flat-out wrong, considering Google’s latest content moves, but supply-side informant DigiTimes corroborates the rest, and says that the Google-Asus tablet will go on sale in May for a price between $200 and $250 USD.

If we may return to the ground for a moment: there’s still no concrete evidence that Google plans to commission a Nexus tablet. If you’ll recall, the rumors got started from a statement by Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, who vaguely alluded to “a tablet of the highest quality” some time in 2012. Add to that the fact that DigiTimes sends out a lot of info from the supplier side of the hardware world, and their tunnel vision is wrong about half the time. In other words, consider all of this so much baloney until we see some more concrete evidence.

All that being said, there’s a lot of sense in this latest report. For one, Google IO is in June, just a month after the rumor places the “Nexus Tablet” on sale. One could easily believe that Google would build up stock for a launch at the developer conference, with their usual practice of giving away a device to attendees. Two, a low-price tablet is where the majority of Android tablet sales are going – to companies who don’t use Google’s services. A $200-250 tablet makes sense to combat the Kindle Fire and similar models.

And last but not least, choosing Asus makes a lot of sense. While Google has favored Samsung for their official devices as of late, they’ve used Motorola and HTC in the past. And if you were to pick one company that was leading the Android tablet charge right now, it would be Asus. Heck, their upcoming MeMO 370t is basically what all these Nexus tablet rumors are describing: a cheap, high-quality tablet with little or no software additions from a manufacturer. We eagerly await some news with a little more substance.

[via PocketNow]