ASUS may have pushed back the shipment date of its upcoming Eee Pad Transformer Prime to early December. Citing supply chain sources, Digitimes is reporting that Google has agreed to help ASUS launch its latest tablet with Android 4.0 pre-installed. The plan to date had been to ship it with Android 3.2 (Honeycomb) with an upgrade to 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) to follow.
Google is apparently facing some backlash from Taiwan-based manufacturers over its lack of assistance over Android 3.x to 4.0 upgrades. Some of these unnamed companies are now considering focusing more attention on Windows 8 in response.
The same sources suggest that Google’s decision to help ASUS could also help ASUS negotiate lower Windows 8 license fees for future products.