Google has no future plans to release additional tablet devices and has even canceled two models that were in development, Google confirmed to Computerworld today.
Google has not released a tablet in 2019, but did come out with the Pixel Slate in 2018. Google was working on two smaller tablets, but ultimately decided to stop focusing on the tablet form factor in favor of laptops.
A Google spokesperson directly confirmed all of these details to me. The news was revealed at an internal company meeting on Wednesday, and Google is currently working to reassign employees who were focused on the abandoned projects onto other areas. Many of them, I’m told, have already shifted over to the laptop side of that same self-made hardware division.
As a result of this news, Google’s apparently canceled two tablets that were in development. It’s said that they were smaller than last year’s Pixel Slate, but that’s likely all we’ll ever know about them. As for the laptop side of things:
As for the future, a Google spokesperson tells me it’s quite possible we’ll see a new laptop-oriented Pixelbook product before the end of the year.
Google will continue to keep the Pixel Slate updated through June 2024 as initially planned, but as far as we can tell, that’ll be the last tablet we see from Google for a while.
Google will be shifting focus to laptops, with a laptop-oriented Pixelbook product planned before the end of the year, and will also continue focusing on its Pixel line of phones.
The Pixelbook is still widely regarded as one of the best Chromebooks you can buy, so it’s exciting to hear that we should soon get a successor to it. The Pixel Slate, on the other hand, was met with mostly mixed reviews from critics and consumers alike.
Google already stopped selling two versions of the Pixel Slate, so it’ll be interesting to see if any other versions meet that same fate in light of this.
