I’ve always made the assumption that people buy tablets solely to use at home, but then I began realizing that every iPad owner I know has a model with cellular connectivity. According to a report in the Taiwanese supply chain website DigiTimes, it looks like the same thing is happening in the Android tablet space. I don’t know about you, but to me that’s shocking considering another assumption I’ve always made: Android tablets are for cost conscious consumers.

This DigiTimes goes on to say that MediaTek is in the best position to take advantage of consumer demand for 3G enabled tablets because they offer an integrated solution (they provide a processor and a cellular modem), whereas competitors like Allwinner, who power the HP Slate 7, don’t.

How much are 3G tablets going for over in Asia? It costs a factory roughly $60 to make one, but a 3G model adds as much as $30 to the bill of materials. Jingwah Digital, who I’ve never heard of, allegedly ships half a million tablets a month. PN Devices, which serves the European market, does 200,000 units a month. Combine the two and you get 8.4 million units a year, which coincidentally is roughly the amount of Nexus tablets that ASUS wants to ship this year.