If you were waiting for Google to make a a follow-on tablet to the Pixel Slate, it looks like you’re going to be waiting awhile.
Apparently Google is quitting the tablet hardware business (again) and will be focusing its larger hardware efforts on laptops for the foreseeable future.
This doesn’t have any impact on other segments of Google’s hardware, such as IoT devices or Pixel phones, but for whatever reason Google is moving out of making its own Pixel tablet, which were a logical complement to their lineup of Pixel phones and Pixel ChromeOS laptops.
The news was first announced in an article by ComputerWorld, and a Twitter post by Google’s SVP of Hardware, Rick Osterloh, confirmed it:
The good news is that Google will not be abandoning their Pixel Slate, the ChromeOS tablet released about a year ago. Both Rick and Google have said that the Slate will continue to be supported with regular software updates through June of 2024, and that Google’s ChromeOS software will still be working closely with other hardware partners to make ChromeOS tablets available.
The small silver lining, though, is that Google has said that they are still committed to the tablet form-factor, which means that a new ChromeOS laptop should be on the horizon sometime soon.
