Earlier this morning when I was scanning through Google’s third quarter 2012 earnings, I noticed that revenue in Google’s “Other” category came in at $ 666 million, versus $ 385 million in Q3 2011. It was such a substantial jump that I pinged a couple of Wall Street analysts, wondering if they could explain the jump.
Mark Mahaney, who follows Google for Citi Research, in an email said that the jump could be explained by the Nexus 7 sales. Mark thinks Google sold about a million units of their tablet (that is made by Asus) and that accounts for about $ 200 million in revenue. Ben Schachter of McQuarie Securities agrees and estimates that Nexus 7 sales accounted for probably $ 150 million to $ 200 million of the $ 281 million jump in other revenue.
Piper Jaffray’s Gene Muster estimates that Google sold between 800,000 to a million units, while Doug Anmuth of JP Morgan says Google sold about 700,000 units of Nexus 7 tablets. These numbers aren’t terribly surprising: The low-cost tablet “sets the standard for small slates” according to my collegue Kevin Tofel, who reviewed the device in July.
In 2011, Google had $ 1.37 billion in “other revenues.” These “other” include money Google rakes in from licensing, enterprise applications, and its various app stores. Now, we’ll have to add Nexus tablet revenues to the mix.
