No SD card slot, apparently. It's a no-buy. Why, Google? Did not enough people ***** when the GNex came out? At least this device is relatively cheap.
The Real Cost of Adding Removable Storage Those of us puzzled over the move by Google (and other vendors like Amazon with their Kindle Fire line) have trouble coming to terms with the apparent reason microSD storage isn’t put into these devices; added cost. After all, how much can adding a microSD card slot really add to the overall price of the product? The answer is a bit deeper than you might think and spans three areas of discussion. Hardware Cost The competition in the portable device market is fierce – and every penny counts when you’re moving hundreds of thousands – or even millions – of units. My research shows that in retail dollars, a microSD slot costs about $2.50. That’s raw material costs – and in quantity, surely they would be cheaper. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the cost is about $2 per unit for hardware and assembly. If Google sells one million Nexus 7 tablets, they are out $2M in profit. That’s not a small sum. The SD slot would roughly represent 1% of the cost of the unit. There is also the “hidden” costs of support; give an end user another moving part and that has a negative effect on the “simplicity” factor which then in turn adds to support staff requirements. Licensing Cost Here is something a lot of people don’t consider. When you give someone a slot, they want to put a card in it. Without being able to control the content of the microSD card, they have to worry about the wildcard factor of the OS the card was formatted with; FAT(16), FAT32, NTFS, etc. Unfortunately, Microsoft holds the rights to many of the common formats – which means if Google wants to use them, they would have to pay for it. I was unable to find an exact price per unit that licensing costs but I’m sure it is enough to cut the profit margin down on competitively priced electronics. While open source projects exist to “get around” official licensing, Microsoft aggressively pursues questionable usage of its intellectual property in the file system world. Doing away with a removable card slot eliminates this headache and cost. Reduction of Ecosystem Profit Most people assume the reason that removable media isn’t part of the equation for devices coming from ecosystem giants like Google or Amazon – is because they don’t want you having space to store your own stuff. After all, if you can store your own media files like TV shows, movies and music, it might reduce your*dependency*on purchasing (or repurchasing) this content from your friendly neighborhood ecosystem like Amazon Video or Google Play. I’d like to believe this too – I love a good conspiracy theory. I’m sure this is a nice “side bonus” of leaving the card slot off the devices, but in the end – I believe it is all down to costs; hard costs and soft costs.