[Nexus 7 General] downwiththebanksters:
The Play Store does not allow payments here in Taiwan because the government insists on consumer protection. They require all purchases, software included, to have a 7 day money back if not satisfied guarantee. When they enforced this policy a little over a year ago Apple immediately changed it's return policy and complied with Taiwanese law, while Google has decided to stick with it's foolish 30 minute policy. While I have little love for Apple, Google, with it's close CIA ties, does not hold the consumer/humanity in as much esteem as the folks in Cupertino do. I have spoken with several developers about this and they say the 30min rule was designed to attract/mollify game developers by preventing folks from downloading games and then deleting them for refund after they "win"/complete them. Someone once said that it sometimes takes more than 30 minutes just to set download and some programs up! All that said, right now the Play store here is crippled by a well meaning government and an intransigent Google.

So with my above comments you bring an interesting wrinkle to the discussion about Taiwan's Play Store and how Google's Senior Vice President of Weasels and Thieves, no doubt a visionary leader, sees the seven day rule. You can see insisting on the 30min rule may have been forward looking to the eventual launch of media. I might be able to get as much as I want from a digital copy of The New Yorker in 30mins, delete it and not pay, but with 7 days I could make a leisurely read of it. I could also watch the uncut version of Seediq Bale 40 times in one week and not pay. Likewise with music. I don't know how returns/refunds/cancellations are handled in iTunes but I'm guessing Apple consumers love to spend money and show it off, so may be less likely to abuse the refund policy (perhaps simply not smart enough to figure it out?). The Android side may be more attractive to those of us who like free, open, and donate our meager excesses to ROM devs, The Pirate Party, and The Electronic Frontier Foundation. or ?

The arguments about the Play Store content aside, i.e. Google views the N7 in the same way Amazon sells the Kindle at a loss to get folks to consume media, I honestly think Google did this to simply drive market share by making a truly great affordable tablet. To ascribe profit motive to Google seems almost far fetched as the open source nature of Android makes it a loss to Google. The Android tablet's have struggled to gain traction, and so I think all that the N7 is: affordable, great hardware, buttery, is an attempt to get a large amount of people to get their first tablet. In the ecosystem wars these tablets will not only build market share, but also mind share in the tablet space, which up until now has been dominated by Apple. I have to refer to the N7 as an iPad to most folks, including my Taiwanese wife; to call it a tablet draws blank stares. So you are right when you view the Play Store as being an integral component of the sale of this device in the dying empires, but the population of the "West", whatever that means, comes in well under a billion. I think Google sees us out here in the rest of the world, the other 6ish billion of us, as an important market too.

Traditionally Apple has had between 10-12% of the market - the Gossip Girl types - who will always need to, and can, pay more for the "Apple experience". Apple's business model, which is based on high prices burnishing the brand, brings it's main goal of high margins. I can't see them changing. Affordable has no cachet. That leaves Google, with it's open source model, to harvest the 99%. I think that is what the N7 is truly about, and thus think Goog teamed with Asus to sell this because they needed Asus's global retail presence; something Google neither has, nor wants, to shift a ton of these devices. They said, "Lets tweak the Kindle model a bit to fit our plans and take it global." This is Google's shot across the iPad's bow, as is the Micro$oft Surface. Oh, and will there be a 7" iPad?

That went way into the weeds on what this thread is actually about, but that is my NT$0.6, and an answer to your question about why/if the N7 should, and will, come to Asia and the rest of the world sooner than later.

All that said are we back to thinking the HK retailers are not selling these tablets with the full permission of Google and/or Asus? Fortress is not known for selling grey market product is it?