Nexus One not an iPhone killer yet
The Nexus One smartphone, also known as the Google Phone, has been billed repeatedly as an iPhone killer, but its sales numbers in the real world are not anywhere near living up to that promise yet.
The hype for Google’s Nexus One was at a fever pitch leading up to its introduction, but the first month of sales for the new smartphone from Google have to be disappointing, no matter how you try to parse the numbers. Far from being an iPhone killer, the Nexus One sold only 80,000 phones in its first month, according to a Wall Street Journal story, which is well below the 525,000 Droids sold by Motorola in their debut month of sales, a number which Motorola has not been able to match since. The Nexus One sales look even worse when compared to an average month for the iPhone, which is 600,000 phones.
That is not to say that the Nexus One is not an interesting phone; by all accounts it is. Instead, it is difficult not to lay a lot of the problems at the feet of poor Google planning and processes. The marketing model that Google is trying to promote for its phone is very different from the consumer’s standpoint, and the marketing efforts to date have been less than sterling as well. Worse, the infrastructure being built and offered by Google to support its new phone is abysmal. There is no telephone support at all, a very odd fact for a company trying to sell a telephone, and the only support option, which is email, has been horribly slow. To date, Google has managed to make AT&T customer service look excellent by comparison, not an easy thing to do.
We may never get an opportunity to see what the Google phone can do in the marketplace simply because Google has been so slow to properly sell and support it that it may die an early and unfortunate death based simply on a poor Google infrastructure. It does not matter how good a phone is if it is a hard sell, is not properly marketed, and is hardly supported at all. Apple has shown the world what a good smartphone it has partially by rising to the top despite poor support from AT&T. The Nexus may be a good phone, but it is going to have an extremely hard time succeeding in the marketplace given all the adversity it faces from its maker.
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February 9th, 2010
It actually depends on how you define the term “IPhone Killer”. if you will based it on Sales, definitely it’s not an IPhone Killer, if its hardware specs and features, it could be an IPhone Killer.
February 9th, 2010
Hello
Its good to know about Google phone.I also like all features and specifications of Nexus One.I came to know certain new things about Google from this post.Thank you very much for this informative post.
February 10th, 2010
Android is the iPhone killer. Always was. It’s the OS, not the phone. Android has ALWAYS had multi tasking, customizable “desktops”, MMS, widgets, Google Navigation, the ability to read SD cards (who knew that was hard?), oh and it’s open source and all of the good apps you really want are free. So besides a slick shell, multi-touch (which Android does but is negotiating patent issues), and the annoying “i” in the name, what is it exactly that the iPhone does so well? Did I mention that iPhone call quality sucks? My G1 kicks iPhone’s butt — maybe it ain’t as pretty, but then again, pretty boys don’t usually last long in a fight.
February 25th, 2010
Lol if you say an iphone out the box yes if you say jailbroken 3gs no competion the iphone 3gs cant be beat it can do all you said and more.
March 1st, 2010
Some time ago, I did need to buy a house for my corporation but I did not earn enough cash and couldn’t purchase something. Thank goodness my dude proposed to try to get the credit loans from reliable creditors. So, I acted that and was happy with my sba loan.
May 26th, 2010
There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it
May 31st, 2010
There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it
June 16th, 2010
Well, it definitely looks like an improvement over earlier iterations, but I still feel Android looks too Linux-like and therefore too geeky for many users. Don’t get me wrong, I use Linux a lot and I think it is a very capable operating system, but I mainly use it as a server operating system and I still do not like Gnome/Kde/Compiz environments which often require hacking to get things working, and it looks too geeky for my taste. I still think Apple produces the best GUI (design, user experience and underlying API’s) on a *nix environment, nothing can beat them on that front. Same goes for the iPhone vs the Android GUI.
Another thing is that Apple’s App Store is better that the Android Marketplace, from a commercial perspective. Several newsreports mention Apple’s App Store as a marketplace to make profit, while in contrast the Android marketplace does not seem as profitable for commercial developers. In order to boost interest for commercial parties the Android Martketplace should be redesigned to make it commercially interesting, if Google wants to gain marketshare.
One thing I really like about Android and that is the openness of the platform. I would really like to be able to do everything with my phone and be in control. As the iPhone is closed this is limiting me in my freedom to do so. I like the sandboxed approach for running application of the iPhone, even though this has it’s limitations. Even though I like the openness of the Android platform I’m not sure if a viable app-store would be possible in an ‘open world’…
So overal, I think the iPhone is still going strong while Android could have potential in the future, but it is not good enough yet. The main issues Google has to tackle is to improve user experience, make sure the Android marketplace is a profitable environment for commercial parties, and innovate…
June 16th, 2010
i’ve gotten to play with one over the past week, and it has some cool eye candy – the animated wallpapers and 3D app-wall being my favorites, but where it outshines the iPhone is in the display. i compared it with my 3G – playing the Up trailer – and the colors were much richer. otoh, the much-hyped GPS totally got us lost once, whereas my iPhone saved the day
June 16th, 2010
Unless Google or HTC specifically said it was an “iPhone killer” I don’t understand what this is about?
Can someone educate me?
November 4th, 2010
I agree with you. There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.