A report at Digitimes claims that the next Nexus tablet will be made not by Asus, who made the first two Nexus 7 tablets, nor Samsung, who made the Nexus 10. It won’t even come from , who builds the Nexus 5 phone fro .

Rather, the new Nexus tablet, due to hit the market in the 3rd quarter of this year, will be built in partnership with HTC. HTC hasn’t built a Nexus device since the original Nexus One back in 2010. Focusing on the phone market has been of paramount importance for the company in the last few years.

The report calls it an “8-inch device,” which is a little larger than the Nexus 7, while some rumors suggest it’s closer to 8.9 inches.

The system-on-chip (SoC) in last year’s Nexus 7 was a lower-clocked variant of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 600. It’s probably too much to ask for this new model to be among the first tablets to feature the Snapdragon 805, but it will almost certainly come packed with at least a Snapdragon 801. The 8.9-inch Kindle Fire HDX has a display resolution of 2560×1600, if the new Nexus is going to have a bigger than 7-inch display, it will almost certainly feature a higher resolution. It will need an SoC with a powerful graphics chip to keep things running smoothly.

According to Digitimes’ sources, the Nexus tablet is no longer needed as a means of boosting Android tablet popularity, so this year’s model may be the last. If that’s the case, we’d love to see go out with a bang: instead of producing something that starts at just over $200, instead aim for premium materials, high-end specs, low weight, high battery capacity to produce a “showcase” tablet that sets a new quality bar at a price like $329-$349 (enough to undercut the id mini, without aiming to be the low-cost leader).