Nexus 7 was designed, and manufactured in just four months, also sold at cost

We saw that Google's Nexus 7 tablet was unveiled yesterday, where we found out ASUS was the hardware partner in the deal. But ASUS' chairman, Jonney Shih, along with Google's head of Android, Andy Rubin, have revealed at the $199 Nexus 7 tablet is sold at cost.

They also revealed that the Nexus 7 was designed and manufactured in just four months, Shih says to AllThingsD "our engineers told me it is like torture". ASUS was told that they needed to get the Nexus tablet ready in just four months, it had to be high-end, and should not cost over $200.

Shih also said that his team learnt a lot from working so closely with Google's engineers, and in order to get it ready in four months, Shih sent people to work at various locations, including Silicon Valley. This put his workers closer to Google, and also allowed his engineering team to have a 24-hour development cycle.

Even with those moves, Shih had to add another 20 people to the project, which were followed by another lot of 20. Rubin did give Shih and the ASUS team immense credit, being quoted:

I don't think there would have been any other partner that could move that fast. We went from zero to working product in four months.