Nexus One a Failed Experiment In Online Sales 366
shmG writes "The demise of the Google Nexus One phone is fairly straightforward: a lack of sales killed the product. While it will continue to sell through Vodafone in Europe, KT in Korea and a few others, the experiment of Google indicates that selling a phone direct to consumers online is dead. 'The bottom line is people like to look at phones in the store. Google has a lot to learn about phone sales, this is one lesson they learned.'"
False (Score:5, Insightful)
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And when you bought it full MSRP without subsidy, there was little to no savings per carrier on your monthly bill.
Re:False (Score:5, Informative)
Not with T-Mobile. Go look at their site.
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Unless you were already a t-mobile customer. Then you had to cancel your t-mobile contract, and sign back up because the full discount was only available to new customers.
I called and told them I wasn't happy about that, they said that they understood and the policy was under review but there was nothing they could do. Then they offered me discounts on a 3G Slide instead.
Personally, I think a big part of the problem with the Nexus One pricing was that it wasn't simple enough, depending on how you bought it
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I will be switching to that as soon as my contract on the droid is up. I was worried about coverage, but a coworker has a 3G slide with them.
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With data, you save $20 per month and $480 over 2 years: http://www.t-mobile.com/shop/plans/Cell-Phone-Plans.aspx?catgroup=Individual&WT.z_unav=mst_shop_plans_individual [t-mobile.com]
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And when you bought it full MSRP without subsidy, there was little to no savings per carrier on your monthly bill.
Horse shit.
I bought it through Google because I have an unlimited data plan with AT&T that costs $10 per month. If I had gone through AT&T to get a new phone (Nexus One or not), then I would have been forced to "upgrade" my contract and pay at least $20 more per month.
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Re:False (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:False (Score:5, Funny)
Re:False (Score:5, Funny)
they just want an iPhone.
Well, it does have the wifis and the bigger Gee Bees.
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No, iPhone consumers don't want to look at the phone in store. Mostly they don't even care what it does, they just want an iPhone.
With tens of millions of the things out there odds are they've played with a friends' iPhone, no need to go to a store to do that. It's not really an unknown entity; everyone who wants one knows what it looks like and what it does.
Re:False (Score:5, Insightful)
Failures:
1. Large upfront cost. Consumers don't think about future costs.
2. Not shoved in your face. Consumers aren't smart enough to seek things out.
3. Too many hoops. People had to do too much work if they wanted to get carrier subsidizing worked out.
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I think you could get a subsidy if you wanted to slum around on T-Mobile, actually.
Yes, you could get an upgrade price on T-Mobile...but only if you had an individual plan. If you had a family plan, and wanted to upgrade one of your phones to a Nexus One, you had to pay full price for the unlocked phone.
Re:False (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm slumming on T-Mobile, and if this is slumming then call me homeless.
Hella better than Verizon with customer service, features, and choices.
The price is the reason I switched, and the rest sold me.
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Aye. I wish I could have stayed with T-Mobile, but with my job change they weren't on the approved business suppliers. They have by far the best customer service of any mobile provider, and they just kept improving coverage as far as I could tell. I was on a mailing list where they'd tell me about the new towers in the area as they'd go up.
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Hella better than Verizon with customer service, features, and choices.
I think it depends on where you're using the phone. If I'm near an ocean of some kind, my experience with T-Mobile has been pretty good. When I've been further inland is when things turned sour. I had no service anywhere east of Spokane, Washington through the entire western half of Montana, for example. All the features in the world don't matter if you can't connect to their network.
FWIW, Nextel was the same way if not worse. I went on
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I had no service anywhere east of Spokane, Washington through the entire western half of Montana, for example.
That's a good reason to get a ham radio. Lots of repeaters out that way.
Re: Slumming on AT&T (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:False (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason it seemed expensive is because you weren't paying off a loan with the remainder of your wireless contract. Considering that all smartphones are really just small computers, their prices are pretty much where they should be.
The reasons behind the demise were probably a) some people can't do the math to figure out how much they're really paying for the phone, and b) others really like upgrading every 2 years to impress their friends.
Re:False (Score:5, Informative)
But wireless contracts tend to be the same price whether you're paying off a loan or not; in other words, you're just wasting a lot of money if you didn't get a phone+contract from your carrier.
Re:False (Score:5, Informative)
T-Mobile does give a discount for bringing your own phone. It is why once the contract on my droid I will be going that way. That and they have phones with unlocked bootloaders.
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T-Mobile isn't even an option in this area of the Midwest. Closest T-Mobile store is 90 miles away. Here it is Verizon, AT&T, or Sprint and there are no other choices. And that is the case for a lot of places. For what the N1 cost I could just about buy a low end iPad 3g and docking station + cheap just a phone cell phone and have a platform that functions better for email/apps/web surfing than a phone and probably a phone with better reception for phone calls than a smart phone.
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Then deal with those or move to a civilized part of the country:)
T-mobile store might be far away, but there coverage is expanding.
You would also have to carry your two devices everywhere. My smartphone is my GPS, music player, point and shoot camera and great for finding stuff to do while I am out and about. That last one might not apply much where you live.
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Good luck fitting that iPad in your pocket.
The point of getting a smartphone is having all the power of an internet connected computer plus the ability to make calls all in a single device that can be easily carried with you.
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What kind of discount? Can you do it without contract?
Lots of people mentioning T-Mobile here and NOT giving details.
Re:False (Score:5, Informative)
I bought my Nexus One outright for $529 plus tax, and pay T-Mobile $60/month (plus $4 tax) for unlimited data, unlimited texts, unlimited night and weekend talk, and 500 prime time talk minutes/month. If I'd taken the subsidy and bought the phone for $179, then I'd have to pay $80/month for the same deal. Similar plans are at least $100/month on Verizon or ATT, and $80 on Sprint.
By foregoing the subsidy, I paid an extra $350 for the phone. But over 24 months, I save $20/month or $480, so (at 0% interest) I come out ahead by $130. Also, the phone is unlocked so I can pop in an ATT or European or Asian SIM card, and talk economically on the phone anywhere. And if I was unhappy, I could sell it on eBay.
But I'm not unhappy - it's a terrific phone at a great price.
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Thirty a month? Really? If you don't mind me asking, how much are you paying a month? (I mean after all the taxes and bs...)
Re:False (Score:4, Insightful)
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Type 't-mobile.com'. Voila.
I wanted to hear from a customer, not from a sales website. If you had ever paid for cell service before, you'd understand why.
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Tmobile has the Even More Plus plans which are for unsubsidized phones and are cheaper than an equivalent subsidized plan. If you did the math it was cheaper to buy a Nexus One outright and get the Even More Plus plan for two years than it would have been to get the phone subsidized through Tmobile ($200) and spend 2 years on contract with an equivalent subsidized plan.
There are also situations like my own where I wanted to upgrade to an Android phone but was locked into another year on AT&T thanks to
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Definitely. Tmobile's only failing I can see is that don't do enough to advertise this option. They're a fairly small player in the US. I imagine they could bring over a lot of subscribers with a marketing campaign that educated people on how much subsidized phones cost them.
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how much is freedom worth to you? do you value being able to move to another carrier if the service is poor or if their customer service mistreats you?
Oh people can do the math (Score:3, Insightful)
but they have been conditioned by expert marketing to view what they can afford by monthly costs. A phone contract looks less painful when you say $50 a month instead of $600 a year. People are made poor by the multitude of 'monthlies' they pay for. For many the cost difference between a contract and no contract is a wash.
Lets not forget one other issue besides price, better phones were not far behind coming out, not only technically better but marketed better.
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Re:False (Score:4, Insightful)
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Droid 2 will be as well, and quite likely all future phones that have the Droid moniker.
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You could get it subsidized through T-Mobile for $199. Same as any other smartphone.
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Couldn't agree more. Once I saw it was almost $600 I dropped my plans to buy it and went with an unlocked Nokia E61i at half the price. Been using it for over two years now with few complaints.
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Smart shopping. Of course, if he was really smart, he'd go forward in time and pick up an iPhone 6 from just before the iPhone 7 comes out, bring it back in time to a couple years ago, and then he can post here on Slashdot that "my phone has had that functionality for 10 years, jeez, why do you fanbois get so excited over this crap?" when the iPhone 6 is released in a few years!
Just *think* of the possibilities!
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Re:False (Score:5, Insightful)
The real problem was that nobody knew that it was available. It got plenty of attention on /. and other tech sites, but take an average Joe who owns a smart phone and I guarantee you that he's never heard of it.
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expensive compared to what? i hope you aren't comparing subsidized phone costs.
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http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/09/05iphone.html [apple.com]
Apple sold nearly a million iPhones at the original price ($499-$599) in the first two months. (And the 8GB, $599 units outsold the 4B, $499 ones by a pretty wide margin--so much so that when the price drop happened, they also discontinued the 4GB model.) Then they lowered the price to $399 and it still sold very well--a total of six million in the first year, according to this. [cnet.com] It wasn't $199 until mid-2008.
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Well, that's part of it but there are other factors. At one time, some carriers (t-mobile, for one) would either give discounts on service or let people get month-to-month contracts if they brought their own phones so there was some incentive to spend the money up front. Either you recovered the money through lower monthly costs or you were free to jump carriers at any time. Currently, I don't think any carriers will do that. A few years ago, I switched to t-mobile and explained that I had an unlocked p
n900 and carrier discount (Score:5, Insightful)
I paid $500 for a Nokia n900 and get about $20 off my monthly t-mobile payment vs. what I would have paid with a subsidized phone. It evens out in the length of the two-year contract for a subsidized phone. And meanwhile I can plug in foreign SIMs when I go overseas, so I don't have to carry a separate unlocked phone. And could I really have resisted a phone that can run a full Debian distribution in a chroot while it also runs its own, mostly Open Source, non-Java, platform?
But I'm not the normal consumer, am I?
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The Nexus one has that too, you just need to install some software for it. Third party software of course.
Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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Considering the Incredible and EVO are really just updated versions of the Nexus One, I'd say you are correct.
Lack of promotion? (Score:5, Insightful)
I never saw the Nexus One promoted, nor a link to the store anywhere (except perhaps on Slashdot.) Google has used their pageviews to promote other products and services, for example their ads for Chrome.
Could it be the reason Nexus One didn't succeed was simply a lack of promotion?
Re:Lack of promotion? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody outside of the geek crowd knew about the nexus 1. If a layperson did encounter one on the street, it likely wasn't a memorable experience.
"you paid how much for that!? and it still doesn't have the cool animations the iphone has?!!"
Good luck creating desire among the general public with talk of open development and how many IDEs you can use with android.
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Yes, there is a huge lack of awareness regarding the N1. I own one and am repeatedly asked what phone it is. I always say "it's the Google phone" but everyone usually has a blank face when they hear that. Part of the reason the "droid" phones are so successful is because they have Verizon branding and correctly advertising the hell out of the product. It isn't too hard to find someone that owns some kind of Verizon droid. I do think being able to go to the store and see one also helps hesitant buyers, but i
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Lack of promotion certainly played a part but the lack of VERIZON was also an issue. I replaced my personal cell in May and the N1 was never a possibility for me. There is no AT&T here, only Alltel. I'm sure the N1 would have worked but Alltel's service in this area is notoriously poor. That left me to choose between Verizon handsets...and you can't get the N1 that way.
When your product is only available for use with one of the two available MegaCarriers then you've immediately limited your potential ma
Online isn't the problem, it's carrier subsidies (Score:5, Insightful)
95%+ of the population doesn't have a problem with being locked into a contract for two years in order to save a few hundred on a phone, especially since no provider gives any significant plan discounts to those who "bring their own device" in the USA.
So a non-subsidized phone is dead in the water from the beginning unless it offers something that's so unique as to be worth the price. (For me, if the N1 had a physical keyboard, I would have paid the money for it. Once they released the version that supported AT&T 3G, it was the only device that had a recent Android release on AT&T. However, it had no keyboard.)
I'd mod you higher, but you are maxed. (Score:2)
You hit the nail on the head.
What Google's exercise shows is that unless you get cooperation with the wireless carriers to subsidize your phone, it's not going to sell. The article says that the phone cost $529. There is no way I would spend that much money on a telephone.
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There is no way I would spend that much money on a telephone.
?!?!
As many others have said, people do this all the time - They just spread the cost over their three year 'contract.'
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No they don't, the flaw in your logic assumes they pay more for their contract than they would if they didn't have a subsidized phone.
The actual truth is that if you don't go for your contract subsidy, you get no discount whatsoever.
The only thing you gain with BYOD is the ability to pay month-to-month - but many providers won't even let you do that, or you will pay MORE in service fees alone for month-to-month service with BYOD than you will for a contract that includes a subsidy for your equipment.
USA subsidising model (Score:5, Informative)
To be more precise, it seem to be that the problem stems from how the subsidizing is done in the USA :
- Carrier get exclusitive arrangement on certain model.
- Said model is only available at their (physical or online) store
- The only way to get a subsidised phone is through these stores.
This pretty much fucks up the market, because you don't get a free choice of service provider and phone. You pick one and you'll be restricted for the other.
And a phone without an exclusivity contract has just no choice.
Contrast the situation in several European country (including Switzerland, for a precise example) :
- Service providers don't give a damn about exclusive phone models. They compete purely on services and data plans.
- Phones are available in various shops depending on what the store's suppliers has, not who has signed an exclusive contact with whom.
- Thus most major phone companies (Nokia, Motorola, SonyEricsson, Samsung) are available in most shops (mostly in brick and mortar shops)
- Some shops could even import less known brands (Palm, Google, the first Android based HTCs, etc.) (mostly imported in computer-parts shop and other shops for technically savvy people).
- Subsidising is done at the shop level : You subscribe to or extend a contract with the service provider of your choosing available in said shop, and the provider will give a rebate that you can redeem on any phone of your choosing (as long as the phone is also in this shop's catalog)..
- Phone and service aren't linked. Service providers don't give a damn on which phone you used their rebate, as long as you sign a contact with them.
- You can actually use the Phone with a different SIM or even offer it as a present to your significant other, etc. (no SIM lock).
- As long as you keep the contact for said duration the provider is happy, they'll only get annoyed if you cancel the contract prematurely (you'll have to reimburse a part of the phone depending on how early you cancel).
Results :
- Phones from big companies have all their chance.
- Phones from less known companies can still get sold in some quantities through smaller shop specialising into import from those compagnies.
- Service provider have to concentrate on providing good services, because that's the only criterium they compete on.
- No phone company can hope to get away with shitty service just because the sell some magic Jesus-phone. If the service sucks, the users will simply get the phone with another service provider.
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TMobile's unlimited everything no-contract plan was $20/month cheaper than the subsidized plans, making the unsubsidized N1 cheaper than one under contract over 2 years.
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in the us may be.
in europe it is very different. i haven't bought a subsidised phone since the n70 in 2005. the crapware loaded on that by vodafone that was unremoveable made be buy all phones after that sim free.
wasn't much of a change for me as i use all my phones on prepay so the price went up around 100. i even bought an iphone 3g on prepay. 630 if i remember rightly. when i go to a linux potd meeting i reckon 90% of the mobiles there are sim free. less hassle. you're dealing with fewer companies
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How much data do you have?
What carrier are they reselling?
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The most data I see I 50MB/month, is this for real?
That is about a day for me.
I like buying phones directly (Score:2)
However i usually buy them from companies focusing on HW.
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Not from the source (Score:2)
This is about the billionth time I've heard that Google failed at this, and not one of them has a quote from Google about it.
They are assuming that Google's intention was to revolutionize phone sales. Perhaps they had other goals, instead? Perhaps they were successful and no longer need to sell them directly. Perhaps they failed and are stopping.
We Don't Know.
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Perhaps they had other goals, instead?
For a moment I thought that said "other goats, instead" -- to which I would have said something incredibly witty.
But you didn't, so I just wasted my time.
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I think it's rather silly to flatly state that selling phones direct to consumers is "dead." Just because Google didn't out sell the iphone, or push millions of units doesn't make direct-to-consumer sales dead. It just means that if you want to sell lots of phones direct to consumers, there are many lessons to be learned from Googles experiment.
I bought a Nexus One unsubsidized because Apple and AT&T refused to unlock my paid-for iPhone. I just moved out of the US and wasn't willing to pay literally
Why are we still obsessing over this? (Score:3, Insightful)
The reason it failed is likely a lack of marketing. That, and it was rather expensive. And it wasn't even possible to use it in some places because you need to buy a phone from your operator, right?
Anyway, hasn't this exact story been posted several times on Slashdot? This is definitely not the first "Nexus One failed" post. Why do we keep discussing it? Time to move on, perhaps?
Jumping to Conclusions? (Score:3, Insightful)
Was it really a failure? (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess that depends on what Google hoped to accomplish. From a pure sales perspective, the Nexus One didn't make a big dent in the market. But with Android, Google is trying something that Microsoft tried with WinMo, and failed at; one of the many reasons was stagnant, crappy and divergent hardware. I've never believed the purpose of the N1 was to sell a lot of phones... that was obvious from the selection of T-Mobile as the carrier... the purpose was to drive Android forward and keep it from falling into one of the traps WinMo fell into.
So if you compare pre--N1 Android phones to phones in the post-N1 era, the difference is startling. Nexus One may have failed in sales, but it succeeded in pushing the ecosystem forward. And I suspect that's all Google ever really wanted.
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"....purpose was to drive Android forward ...."
And how, exactly, does failing to sell a significant number of phones drive ANYTHING forward?
Online sales dead? (Score:2)
Not True (Score:2)
The bottom line is people like to look at phones in the store.
Not true. I'm sure we can all think of at least one, if not a couple of examples that prove this to be utterly false.
The lesson Google should have learned, but apparently didn't, is that people trust hardware from a hardware company but are far less likely to trust hardware from a software company (*). Look no further than the company Google has been waging war with the longest - Microsoft. They have had one "success" in transitioning to hardware in the XBox (quoting "success" because that's highly debat
Carriers sell online (Score:2)
Which is why most (all?) carriers sell phones online. I think Apple manages to sell a few iPhones online as well.
direct buying isn't the problem... (Score:2)
How many iPhones, HTC EVOs and other early adopter phones are purchased without ever touching one? I bet it is the majority. The inability to touch and hold the phone wasn't the problem, the problem was that we live under a cell phone system is is based on phone subsidization and multi-year contracts. If a phone could be purchased at full price and a phone service could be paired with it that didn't carry a subsidization premium, they might have done much better. Bottom line is that Americans don't like pay
Fear, uncertainty, and doubt (Score:4, Insightful)
The demise of the Google Nexus One phone is fairly straightforward: a lack of sales killed the product.
“The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did. It was so successful, we didn't have to do a second one." Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO [1]
Google has tried to paint the Nexus One experiment as a success because it helped build market presence for Android, its operating system.
Clearly false, Google has painted the Nexus One as a success because it has dramatically pushed phone hardware forward. Whether phones as powerful as the EVO 4G and Droid X would be available without the Nexus One, I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
"I don't think they will (produce another phone)," Dulaney said. "Maybe when the market matures, like it did with personal computers, maybe then you'll see people buying phones off the internet. But right now people want to go in and see the devices."
Google's CEO announced that they wouldn't be producing a "Nexus Two" three motherfucking weeks ago. Thanks for the completely unnecessary speculation, though. "I called up the board and said: 'Ok, it worked. Congratulations - we're stopping.'" [2]
[1][2] Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/google/7864223/Googles-Eric-Schmidt-You-can-trust-us-with-your-data.html [telegraph.co.uk]
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Schmidt knew things like the Droid were coming. He's spinning.
Google wanted to make money on phones and have control of a device for its OS. It wanted to be like Apple, making $jilions on the iPhone, but with more user and developer freedom. It's spinning now, taking success where it can get it, and claiming that getting its ass beat by other phones using the same OS was what it meant to do all along.
The online-sales model would have worked fine except for one thing: the phones didn't work very well for
I heard it wasn't very good. (Score:3, Interesting)
Look, I was up for a new phone this summer (AT&T isn't going to cut me a break on my rates, so I'm going to get a new fucking phone every 18 months, even if that means I immediately flip it on eBay). WinMo is no longer viable - there are android and iphone apps for everything the WinMos had a lock on two years ago, and I wanted a finger interface. W7 will not be ready in time.
I considered both android and iPhone, and did a bunch of research on them. For all the limitations of the iPhone, none of them mattered to me that much. I would miss tethering, but I only used it 4-6 times per year. The Nexus One was intriguing, but - by Android users own admissions it fell short. The touchscreen was inferior to the iPhone (a big point of contention with my old WM, and one of the things I really liked on my wife's iPhone). A standout feature was the notification light...but it didn't work as planned, and Google appeared to have abandoned ever making work. And, honestly, I couldn't play with one before stroking a check for $600.
I got an iPhone 3, liked it, and upgraded to a 4 for the speed and camera (which is very good, btw). Sold the 3 for within $20 of what I paid. Now, I'm not very happy with the 4, or Apple in general, since the 4.0.1 update bricked my phone and Apple had no answer on how to fix it. Thank goodness for mac hackers or I'd be at an AT&T store asking them to replace my !@#$ @#$#% phone with something that worked. I shouldn't have to troll the mac equivalent of XDA to get my never-jailbroken, never-hacked iPhone to do a simple update.
I'm still in the market, but AT&T android handsets are crippled, the new Moto android handsets are hobbled and Verizon wants $30 more poer month for their service (which is no better than AT&T near me), and everyone else coverage makes AT&T's map look continuous. The Nexus was nice, but now it's gone, and there's no push to get a better android phone, just a fatter spec sheet. I was hoping a N-2 might be in the offing, and a real phone shootout would ensue in my house. Guess not.
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the touchscreen isn't that bad. and the visuals of the screen (at the time) kicked the iPhone into the mud.
i've never had a problem with the notification light. have no idea what you mean about google not making it work. when i get notifications of any kind, it blinks every few seconds. just what it's supposed to do.
And, honestly, I couldn't play with one before stroking a check for $600.
Exactly my point in my earlier post. It's not that you didn't have the money or the desire, it's that you couldn't wo
The Nexus was the best phone purchase I ever made. (Score:4, Interesting)
I began considering the Nexus when Google first introduced it. Like most others, I was unsure because of the $529 price tag. My wife and daughter were also in the market for new phones. Having already owned an HTC G1, the question of Android performance was never an issue (I paid full price for that phone, too).
The issue for me was contracts. My contract with T-Mobile had expired, and I wasn't willing to lock into another one. T-Mobile had also just introduced some new no-contract plans, so I did some math.
I ran the numbers for getting a two-year contract with two new MyTouch 3Gs at the $149 subsidized price. I wanted an unlimited everything plan. Then I looked at the same idea, only I'd buy the MyTouch phones at retail ($399 each). with their no-contract Even More Plus plan. Over the course of the same two years, I would pay $500 *less* for the phones and the service, without a lock-in. Not only that, T-Mobile made me a great offer: if I purchased the phones in a retail store, I could pay $20 down on each, plus the sales tax (about $50 total for both phones), and then pay the phones off at $20 per month each, added to my bill, with no interest. I could pay off the phones at any time.
That $500 savings justified the cost of the Nexus. The girls love their MyTouch devices, and the Nexus is probably the best phone I've ever owned. I've already rooted and modded it. Buying it unlocked was a plus, especially when I traveled to Europe a few weeks ago: slip in a local SIM and off I went.
Perhaps I'm fortunate in that buying the phone at full price is something I can do, but the sales model is something that makes sense. I can see this becoming more common in the future: manufacturers create the devices, make them workable on multiple carriers (especially for data between AT&T and T-Mobile in the US), sell them unlocked and let people just pick a carrier and buy a plan.
Then again, I know what I want. I don't necessarily need to touch something to see it's value.
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I disagree (Score:2)
At that pricepoint or locked into a contract as such, I think the program was a smashing success.
Everyone forgets the G1.... (Score:2)
Just ordered mine on Monday (Score:2)
I've been an avid iPhone user for the past few years. Was just about to grab the iPhone 4 up in Canada when it's release next week but I already had iOS 4 (mildly jailbroken) on my 3g and in all honesty, I wasn't overly impressed. While it did implement the much need multi-tasking I always felt locked and when I did fiddle with other jailbroken apps (OS 3 + 4) I found the performance went to hell.
So a few weeks back I saw the Nexus One won't be offered anymore and I did a bit of investigating and realized
Typical Google (Score:2)
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like other projects, Google throws things at the wall to see what sticks. I'm sure the idea going around last year (remember, the Nexus One was a little bit after the Droid, so the idea of a 'Droid success' had not yet been covered in the press) was 'mimic Apple, they have the hot ticket'. Microsoft is doing this right now to the point that it's almost ridiculous.
So for Google, Nexus One had its day and that's it - many others are succeeding with Android now and since Go
advertising, cost (Score:2)
1. while google did advertise online, through their services, that was about it. if you frequented tech sites you might have known about it, otherwise no.
2. the perceived price is massive compared to amy other phone. US culture perceives cell phones to be around $200 max. the N1's $530 price tag produce an incredible sticker shock for the average person.
They're not the only ones who need to learn this.. (Score:2)
If the lesson here is "People like to see the phones in a store" then Radio Shack, for instance, should take note. I need to be able to use the phone before I buy it to see if it's any good. If all you've got are dummy mock-ups, that doesn't do me any good.
Maybe the obvious (Score:2)
Maybe the problem is easier than you realize.
Maybe, JUST MAYBE, even though it ran 'Linux', it is entirely possible, that no one really wanted it.
Maybe, and I realize I'm going out on a limb here, but MAYBE the general population of the world doesn't want a fanboy phone, they want a good phone.
While you can rant all day long about why you think Android is Gods gift to the world, most people don't feel that way. Android is not something that gives the general public any warm tingly feelings.
I know its hard
I could not get one even if I wanted (Score:2)
I live in mainland Europe (Eurozone) and every time I tried to buy a Nexus One the Google website brushed me off. After many months the HTC Desire was finally launched. To get one of those I need to order from the UK (not in the Eurozone) and pay a lot more than a US customer would.
Google is wrong. You just need to make it slightly cheaper, or more feature full, and actually available. I wanted to buy a Nexus One and ended up buying an iPhone because I couldn't get it anywhere. Sure, having the carrier d
They DIDN'T EVEN TRY! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry for the uppercase, but this is infuriating: the Google online store was actively refusing to sell the damn phone to more than 95% of the world population!
There are tutorials all over the internet in all kind of languages with complicated and costly (more than US$ 100 on top of the official price) procedures to buy the Nexus One outside the US.
The thing has been available in Europe only after six months and has been frequently sold out for weeks in both stores and online stores. See e.g. the difficulties to buy it in the UK, France, Italy, eastern Europe, etc. from May to the beginning of July.
I've been trying to buy it (from Italy) for months and I've finally found one only three weeks ago thanks to a post on a forum that tipped the right store that had one available.
So before jumping to wrong conclusion, please try to avoid blocking more than 95% of the world population from your store (no jokes about starving African kids, please: Africa is less than 15% of the world population, and not everyone there is busy dying anyway). And keep in mind that people from Europe and some Asian countries get much better than the average American what these thing can do (the first thing I did with mine is installing bash and Python; and, yes, a powerful always-on pocket computer with GPS, constant internet access, camera and all kind of sensors can be programmed to do lots of new unusual useful things).
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