As previously reported, the tablet looks set to be manufactured by Taiwanese vendor Asus, creator of the Transformer and Slider tablets, and will – according to sources – have a 7-inch display, an Nvidia Tegra 3 quad-core processor, WiFi connectivity and will run Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). There have also been some reports that Google wants to delay the tablet even further, so it can embed the latest Android version, Jelly Bean (Android 5.0), onto the device.

The main sticking point for Google, however, appears to be the price and as the tablet said to be based on Asus’ MeMo 370T tablet design, the price it would need to be sold at for a profit is thought to be $249. It would seem that Google is not happy with this price, and so is looking to replace components, in the hope of bringing it closer to the $199 charged for Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble's Nook Tablet. As a result, this move looks set to push back the release date from May, as first expected, to July of this year.

Should this rumor turn out to be true, and with other reports circulating on the possibility of a 7.85-inch iPad, it would appear that a tablet space once derided as ‘dead on arrival’ by Steve Jobs could soon be heating up, with the likes of Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Google and Samsung all fighting for the same consumers.