Google's Second-Gen Nexus 7 May Be Limited To 3.5 Million Units

Google GOOG was expected ship as many as eight million units of the second-generation Nexus 7 in 2013. A new report by DigiTimes indicates that may not be the case. According to the Taiwan-based supply chain publication, global shipments are estimated to come in at 3.5 million units -- less than half of the original estimate. It is also half the number of units that the original Nexus 7 sold in one year. The unusually low number is being blamed on the device's limited reach. Unlike the iPad and its miniature counterpart, the new Nexus 7 will reportedly skip out on the Chinese market. Google's lower-than-expected shipments are also being blamed on the increasing number of low-cost seven-inch tablets. When the first Nexus 7 arrived last year, Google's biggest threat was Amazon AMZN. Microsoft MSFT posed a threat as well, but Surface's 10-inch display and $500 MSRP put it in an entirely separate class. The same could be said for the third-generation iPad, especially after sales of that unit began to decline. Today the Nexus 7 faces competition from Apple's AAPL current iPad Mini and its anticipated successor, Hewlett-Packard's HPQ Slate 7 and a rising number of cheap clones. GigaOM recently wrote about a little-known $149 tablet, the Hisense Sero 7 Pro, that is supposedly just as good as the original Nexus 7. Available at Wal-Mart WMT, the Sero 7 Pro includes the following specs:

• NVIDIA NVDA Tegra 3 quad-core processor
• Android 4.2 Jelly Bean
• Seven-inch, 1280 x 800 IPS display
• 1GB of RAM
• 8GB of on-board memory
• 2.0MP front camera
• 5.0MP rear camera with flash and auto-focus
• Mini HDMI, SD, and USB ports
• 10-hour battery life

Those specs are a bit lower than the next-generation Nexus 7, but Hisense's device is also $80 cheaper. In addition to these devices, Google will also face competition from a number of tablets that are expected to ship this fall. Louis Bedigian is the Senior Tech Analyst and Features Writer of Benzinga. You can reach him at 248-636-1322 or louis(at)benzingapro(dot)com. Follow him @LouisBedigianBZ