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Google Stops Selling Its Own Phone
Dave Knott notes that Google has announced it will close its online cell phone store and no longer sell the Nexus One smartphone directly to consumers. "While the global adoption of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not," wrote Andy Rubin, a Google vice president of engineering, on the official company blog. "It's remained a niche channel for early adopters, but it's clear that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from." From the Globe and Mail article: "At least one aspect of Google's attempt to disrupt the world of mobile communications — selling phones directly to customers — has failed. ... [T]he decision to design and sell the Nexus One was perhaps more potentially disruptive for carriers. ... Google plans to continue marketing the Nexus One through 'existing retail channels, essentially partnering with carriers around the world. The Nexus One web store, meanwhile, will essentially become a marketing portal 'to showcase a variety of Android phones available globally.'"
I would never buy a phone I couldn't hold in my hand and try out first. Yes you could try one out that a friend has, but I've never seen a nexus in the wild.
And i wanted that phone too! unfortunately AT&T is the only reliable service provider around here... Besides Cellular South and I despise CDMA.
They better offer it on my network or I'll have to jailbreak that muthafucka.
Qualcomm, Motorola, and others learned this for them already. If you've got something amazing to provide to the cell phone value stream, keep away from competing with those you are helping.
I give them credit for trying to have their cake and eat it too... but as we all know, the cake is a lie.
Like Apple with OS X a decade ago, once you've got your start, you stop pretending to be "different" and caring for the developer community, and cater to your real revenue generators: in this case, the carriers.
But after looking at buying a Nexus One there were 2 primary options. Bend over and pay full price or bend over to T-Mobile and pay their price and lock in. And they only had two plans that were complete shit. I support as many new phones as possible but this wasn't priced well and the plan options they did offer just plain sucked.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
If memory serves, Google stopped directly selling HTC's phone that was designed to work on T-Mobile, and is letting the carriers themselves sell it directly. Google is not a hardware manufacturer.
Of course, I am getting old... so maybe it's my senility setting in and my recollection is incorrect. :-)
StarTrekPhase2 - The Five Year Mission Continues!
They've got the majority of America buying into the subsidy/contract system. The advantages of dropping $500 upfront on a phone aren't obvious to the layman phone buyer. Not when they get get an iPhone for $199 (despite the savings over time of going off contract).
People here know the advantages (and a few here probably bought the N1 from Google) but I think that mindset is going to be hard to change without a drastic drop in the initial cost of the hardware.
Google has announced that it will close its online cell phone store and no longer sell the Nexus One smart phone directly to consumers.
This was not called execution. It was called retirement.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Bosh. I paid for my Nexus One outright, and I probably wouldn't have even looked at it if I had to stop in at one of the phone stores. Those places are sleazy.
T-Mobile has month-by-month rates. A little more pricy, sure, but you are able to switch carriers at any time. Works for me.
It's unfortunate that Google is throwing in the towel so quickly. They're spending fortunes on ads, right now, they must have the money to spare. I don't think they've considered what they're doing.
But I do love my Android phone. It could stand minor hardware tweaking. The software resources are phenomenal.
The cellphone vendors will also be far happier to use Android if Google is not competing with them.
Umm, HTC makes the Google Nexus One, in fact on the back of mine both names are prevalent. HTC just made it more or less to the specs that Google wanted, I'm sure that HTC contributed plenty in terms of expertise, but this was the phone that Google wanted made.
I've got one and it's a really nice phone, it's nice to see that rather than giving up completely, Google's just moving the sales to stores rather than killing the phone completely. It's a good phone and I'm sure people will see that when they play with it in store.
Anti-Streisand: They announce something I never even knew was there is going away, and now that I've heard about it I want it: Inverse-publicity is still publicity.
But Business-wise this is still smart, and Intel have done the same thing before: Get into a market proving to others it's there, then step back to your core competency. It's an arguably longer term strategy than Apple's, which is to own everything. Even if that's working well for the iPhone, I seem to remember a certain Macintosh computer whose market share dwindled under the same strategy.
This totally confuses me with Google, they come up with a world class search engine technology and yet constantly fail to dominate other market sectors and in the end, resort to buying out their competitors. Surely with all the talented staff at Google they could have realised early on that consumers would want a hands on trial, and customisable service plan options -- why not just offer these instead of giving up altogether?
Yes, this is the real reason that Google is stopping sales. The carriers want to feel important. People will still end up using the phone on T-Mobile most of the time, so this will affect few people to any significant degree.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm not sure which revisionist idiot informed the general OSS/Google fanboy world that selling unlocked phones directly to consumers was somehow innovating. Nokia has been doing this for years. I bought my last Nokia phone, the E70, well before even the iPhone was out directly via Nokia's website. You can still buy many Nokia products this way, including the venerable N900.
The prices may not always be the very best you can find but at least they are a trusted source.
I read the script, and I think it would help my character's motivation if he was on fire. -Bender
I have some relatives who work at Google, so i got to play with their Nexus Ones while i was home for the holidays (obviously a marketing angle that didn't impact most people.) I was impressed with the phone, and equally impressed with the ability to buy the hardware upfront and get a cheaper no contract plan from T-Mobile. I ordered one from the website the first day they were available and i've been quite happy with it. (Okay, aside from the stupid "soft" home row keys. Going with those instead of real pressable buttons was a horrible idea, and i find it strange that manufacturers seem to be continuing to make the same stupid decision with newer models.)
I'm a little worried about this development though, even though i've already got mine. After the closure of the Google store how easy will it be to get unlocked phones in the future? The savings from the no contract data plan will have completely paid the difference for my phone somewhere between 4 and 18 months from now (depending on how i want to count it) so what happens when i decide i want to upgrade to whatever the latest and greatest is? I don't want to get locked into that whole subscriber model again.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Compared to the Droid, the sales weren't all that great and they do raise the excellent point that many people want to be able to hold it before they commit to the purchase. Also, there are several other Android phones (e.g. Droid Incredible) that have been described as better than the Nexus One and available on a wider range of carriers. By the end of the summer, the Nexus One won't be state of the art as far as Android phones go so there's no real reason for them to continue selling it.
I imagine that they're working on a Nexus Two, so they'll eventually replace it with something else. Hopefully they get the customer service bugs worked out next time around, as that may be one of the potential reasons the device didn't sell as well as I expected it to sell.
"Brick and Mortar" stores aren't going anywhere anytime soon. While there are many people who make almost all their purchases from online retailers, I find that most people would rather go to a B&M store for a purchase.
All of my friends and relatives make their purchases at B&M stores because they don't have to wait or pay for shipping, they can physically "preview" their purchase, they can pay in cash instead of a paying with a credit/debit card, and it's far easier to make a return on an item. The only reason I've known them to make an online purchase is for a SIGNIFICANT discount (books, hardware, etc.), though, many B&M stores have become very competitive with online retailers.
NOTE: I am referring to the purchase of physical items in my comment. Most of my friends make software purchases online (i.e. Steam).
While I it may be that their method of sale/distribution did not succeeded, the phone itself, and Android as an OS, is great. I've never owned a better phone.
There has been a lot of whining and griefing about the phone itself. I have no idea WTF all the complaints are about. I get great data and voice coverage (I hear TMobile isn't the best, but it satisfies me), and the only bug I've ever had is that the ringer sound will stop working about once a month -- I have to reboot.
Because carriers are fucking greedy bastards. Not everyone can afford $80 per month with lame caps and 3-years contracts.
I've never seen a nexus in the wild.
It's not limited to Nexus One. I haven't seen a Maemo/MeeGo phone in the wild either. Today, to prove a point, I walked into three different local stores and asked to try a Nokia N900 phone. None of them had one. Is this commonplace for geek-friendly phones?
unfortunately AT&T is the only reliable service provider around here
Uh, it was sold unlocked and working with every service provider.
Unlike T-Mobile, AT&T gives no discount on the service for bringing your own phone.
Wait, what savings do you get over time from going off contract?
Unlike AT&T, T-Mobile has a discount if you buy your phone up front.
You can still buy many Nokia products this way, including the venerable N900.
But where can I try an N900? I walked into three different stores today and none of them had one. Given the price of return shipping and restocking fees, I prefer to try the display, keypad/touch screen, and hand feel of a phone before I spend over $500 for one.
This is really too bad. Up here in Canada, we're stuck with disgusting 3 year contracts (the 2 year ones have hardly any discount) with egregious profiteering (world's highest text msg prices for instance) and a culture of neglect after you've bought a phone from our oligopoly of carriers. The N1, expensive as it was, really was the best option for a good, unlocked, and free (as in freedom) smartphone. Any Android you get up here will assuredly be abandoned by the carriers - after all, new firmware means less sales according to the carrier. It really meant that the only consistently upgrade friendly Android phone was the N1.
Where I think Google failed was in not offering more choice like a certain fruit-labelled, obsessed-with-lock-in software maker. After all ~$500 for a phone, cheap though it may be over the long run, is a psychologically difficult barrier to overcome. I do believe, however, that having a few options that were cheaper (with appropriately pared down features) could have made it a more profitable venture. Sadly, I would have bought an N1 in the near future, but now it looks like I'll be sticking with my dumbphone.
Furthermore, trusting people to make buying decisions on long term fiscal calculations (without any assistance), might have been ambitious in retrospect. Maybe putting a cost calculator on the N1 website might have helped?
Didn't even make it to Australia. Looking for a replacement for my Nokia 5800 (Great phone, but nothing from Nokia in regards to accessories and being almost ignored a month or two past it's original sale here), I was interested in seeing this phone making it to Australia for sale, outright free from a plan, Android phone with dedicated support from Google. Instead, we have the HTC Desire (a Nexus One with a few extra buttons, exclusive to one carrier here), which will probably be a flavour of the month phone, until the next HTC is pimped out. It's been the same with a few other smart phones getting ignored here. As a result I've sold out to the Fruit Phone, outright, on the basis of it won't be a flavour phone of the month by the manufacture, and pretty much rules the accessory market. I was hoping the Google would of done the same with the Nexus One, along the lines of the fruit company.
As a high-profile unlocked phone, the Nexus One has seemed to have had an effect on carriers here in Canada.
Bell, Telus and Rogers have all been friendly about just putting a SIM card into the Nexus One and using it. I don't know if it's been an official policy at these carriers or not, but previously getting an unlocked phone onto anything but prepaid has been a pain, I was often met with resistance at the stores ("Oh no, you can't do that").
Now, even with other unlocked phones, the stores have been a lot more receptive about getting you on their network.
It may not have sold in spectacular numbers and many consumers have no clue it exists, but the reps in the stores know this phone very well.
Well, maybe if most people would not have gotten the "not available in your country or region", most people would have ordered online. I wanted one, and I am happy I did not: I tried a colleague's Nexus one, and found to phone to be ... well .. not satisfactory...
While Android is a cool thing, after an iPhone all HTC phones feel like cheap plasticky toys. And do not even get me started on the touch screen.
I am in the search for a 850Mhz HSDPA Android phone for some time and haven't found a unit that even remotely challenges the iPhone's quality. Maybe when idroidproject advances a little I can have my 2G running Android....
But the carriers will be less happy, since they charge the same for a plan whether or not you buy a phone through them. With the Nexus One, the customer pays for the whole phone, AND pays the full service price.
Carriers need to stop being phone vendors and need to start being service-providers. Customers should be able to see what part of their plan is funding their service, and what part is paying off their phone. That's the only way to create price-competition between phone manufacturers: show the customers what they're really paying for their phone instead of hiding the price in the service plan.
I have to imagine that if the unlocked price was below $400 (or even the price of a locked phone) it would of sold like hot cakes but unfortunately I think Google had too many external pressures to that prevented them from pricing it accordingly.
Instead, Google *flooded* the net with ads for the N1 hoping their marketing muscle would overcome all other obstacles.
yes, this was the phone Google wanted HTC to make and most likely the phone they wanted others to make. Before the N1, all the other Android phones were underpowered ~600MHz ARM9 based instead of using any of the other ARM Cortex a8 chips which were available. It seemed to me that Google wanted to up the ante for what it meant to be an Android phone and from the number of kick butt Android phones on the market, the N1 did was it would appear it was supposed to do.
Apple will have to leapfrog what the N1 and others put out there and it's all good. It would have been nice if customers took to purchasing the N1 off contract to put pressure on the carriers to provide more options but we can't have it all at once.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I think the same could probably also be said (to a lesser extent) of the hardware vendors. I can't imagine Motorola, Samsung, LG, et al. we're thrilled that HTC was the only maker of the 'official' Google Phone.
.
To be honest, it seemed like a bad idea from the start. But it's too bad -- the Nexus One is the sleekest and one of the most powerful of the Android phones. I really think it's sexier looking than an iphone from a industrial design perspective.
Really though, the mistake was not getting Verizon and Sprint on board and letting them sell it in their stores. I think Google tried to take too big of a step at once. I still think they can make a significant impact on the way phones are made, sold and used; but they should have gone for baby steps instead of trying to drag the entire industry kicking and screaming into a business model that carriers probably didn't see as mutually beneficial.
Carriers are desperate to differentiate themselves. And with the Android Market they lose both a revenue stream, and a way to differentiate themselves since mobile apps are taken out of their hands. I think they probably saw the Nexus One as a pointless deal that had little to no upside If Google had given them some kinda sweet contract deal, they might have done it, and we would have been one step closer to device portability (with many steps, including technology hurdles, still left to come). But I just got the feeling Google tried to take 10 steps towards device portability and the elimination of the racketeering cartel power of the carriers, and they just were having none of that.
That said, I still am contemplating buying an N1, but I would have liked to see it on Verizon.
meep
Ordered mine last week, got it in Wednesday. Very lucky, as it's not a bad phone in the slightest.
I'll be honest, we're throwing science against the wall to see what sticks. -Cave Johnson
Look, here's the real issue. If you bring your own phone in the US, you pay the same price as everyone else. In the EU almost everyone brings their own phone by buying one outright because monthly plans are MUCH cheaper that way. Only idiots or uneducated fools agree to 2 year contracts for smartphones because you end up paying much, much more per month and over the lifetime of the contract.
The US carriers have brainwashed people into thinking they're getting a "subsidy" with the 2 year contract. They're not: it's a LOAN for the phone that you must pay huge interest rates on. There are two problems with this:
1. Invoices do not break down the monthly plans to show the cost of that loan, so there's no way to know how much you're actually spending over 2 years on the phone.
2. People who bring their own phone and thus don't need the loan, *still have to pay for the loan*.
The first point is important because people have no way of knowing that they're being gouged by carriers with unwanted loan schemes.
The second point is important in that this is extortion, and is illegal. The government is simply too weak-kneed to take on the telecom industry. As a consequence there is absolutely no incentive to bring your own phone in the US or buy them outright. In Europe buying outright saves you thousands of dollars over two years. In the US it does nothing for you. Americans thus make the rational economic choice by going for the contracts.
If you're going to bypass the carriers then why not actually sell the phones to the customers who want them. I'm inclined to say that some of the people who would have tried the online store would have been the ones who's local carriers aren't offering the Nexus One.
Just like here in Australia where Vodafone have been "planning" to release this phone since it was frigging announced. I got sick of waiting so I checked out google's online store. "This product is not available in your location". Well great. Thanks a lot. Spent my money on beer instead.
With T-mobile you can get a cheaper plan if you buy the phone outright, but your point holds true with the AT&T version of the phone I think.
If you buy the phone outright, you pay $50/month, if you buy it subsidized with a 2 year contract it's $80/month.
$80*24 = $1920 Buy phone outright: $529 Buy subsidized phone: $179 So if you spend $350 more now, you save $1920 later for a net gain of $1570.
It's the dirty little secret of the wireless industry. They are subsidizing the phone by loaning you $350 for which you you pay them back over 5 times as much over 2 years. It's usury, and it should be illegal.
meep
Seconded. Nokia simply keeps things reasonably open, moreso than the repackaged HTC phones.
The apps are out there, and you don't have to worry about stepping on someone's revenue stream(whether it be Google's or Apple's).
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The Nexus one is needed for AT&T. Currently the only phone running Android is the crappy Motorola Backflip which doesn't even have Google as a search engine and is intentionally crippled, let alone the terrible hardware.
T-Mobile has a good selection, Verizon a great selection and Sprint has several great phones. AT&T however, is crap.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Whoops math fail. Forgot to account for the difference. It should read 30*24 = 720, so you are paying $350 up front for $720 in savings.
meep
well if they still offer the nexus one on every career then there still doing what they wanted to do. or a better way is not to allow careers to lock the phone. so your still buying a unlocked phone just with a contract if you like.
I assume online retailers will continue to sell the phones unlocked. I will never again buy another phone which tells me what network I can use it on despite it's technical ability to connect to other networks. I wish the practice of locking phones would be banned in every country. It works out much cheaper for me since I can get SIM-only contracts or if I get sick of those go back to prepaid which is only marginally more expensive.
Phone service in the USA sucks, I get 250mb data and 50 minutes for 15 eur a month and if I'm close enough to a decent Node B I can use the 250MB to make calls using the pre-installed Nokia SIP client which would likely have been removed if I had bought the phone through a network.
I'm eying Sprint's HTC phone as a very possible migration path off my first generation Iphone. Android looks good, and the development platform looks like it's well thought-out. It would be nice to have a cell phone that could deliver a web page faster than the local sandwich joint could deliver a sandwich, whether or not I'm using my laptop to browse it.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That is wrong these days. You cant really touch a WORKING model in the stores, just plastic shit ones.
Every iPod and iPhone display model that I've seen in a store has been a working unit, not a gutted unit with no motherboard and a sticker for a screen.
Have you thinked a lifetime of a phone ? it's 2 year max.
Carriers who want to get you onto another contract after two years want you to think that. I've had my current dumb-phone for at least five years.
Windows Mobile
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA...ha...ha...*takes a breath*...HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA......
Checking the prices on t-mobile.com, it appears the difference is $80 vs $60 so you are paying $350 up front for $480 in savings. Not sure about t-mobile, but with Verizon, and AT&T you are eligible for upgrade pricing on phones after 20 months of your contract, so assuming you want to upgrade in 20 months, it's $350 vs $400 which is $50 on $350 over 20 months, which is quite a nice interest rate compared to credit cards.
right - they haven't considered it...
And how are they throwing in the towel? Instead of distributing the pone on the web, they will have it in countless physical stores around the world. And for those who don't like stores and want to buy online? I'm guessing that every provider that sells the phone will make it available on their website.
They're spending fortunes on ads, right now,
You mean: The carriers and/or the Manufacturers are spending a fortune on ads. So far, I've mostly seen Droid commercials, not really Nexus commercials.
Well, Verizon spent $100 million on initial advertising push, and sold over a million units. Google spent $0 on advertising and sold 135 thousand units in the same period of time. Advertising works, folks. Google, which makes the bulk of its cash from advertising should have known that.
"selling phones directly to customers — has failed" Until they go brick an mortar - bound to do it eventually.
"It's a doughnut stuffed with M&M's. That way when you finish the doughnut, you don't have to eat any M&M's."
>>>
if you pay full price, you could get $20 / month off the t-mobile plans for people who are not on 2 year contracts, that worked out to be less than getting the 2 year plan over 2 years.
>>>
Time and again I hear shit like this over the last 3-5 years that one day I called t-mobile, 2.5 years after my 1 year contract expired to get off a 1,000 minutes, no roaming fee, long distance included plan I was on that I barely cracked 50 minutes a month on. I was summarily told downgrading to the $29 low minutes plan I wanted required entering a contract! Even though I did not want a free phone, my current working phone was fine, and I was out of contract and free to walk away, AND, just the past month when I inquired it was possible to downgrade just as I wanted. No can do, came the reply. What about the unadvertised bring your own phone, no contract, higher cost sometimes plans I hear my friend Slashdot always mention. No such thing, sir, I was told. Told twice by diffferent reps, on different days!
That was late 2008, early 2009. I was told to sign up for the prepaid tmobile offerings at shitty, gotcha, fine print rates. I had read that night in the newspaper how it costs cell carriers 200-300 dollars to acquire new customers, and I mentioned it to the rep, she couldn't have cared less. Have you actually called tmobile lately to get the rates, plans you mention? I couldn't find a way to downgrade then either online, or via customer service operator. Frankly when it comes to cell plans I don;'t believe 90% of the plan talk I hear you guys fling around. I checked, your citations failed. Caveat lector.
The problem with the N1 is that there is no value in it. Nothing indispensable about it. There was talk before the first Android phone rolled out, after the billion dollar FCC airwaves auction of a couple years ago, in which Google disrupted the field by promising to bid an order of magnitude higher than expected by the cell industry players. It was rumored that rather than antagonize the carriers, their partners to be, their future by competing in their bailiwick -- voice/voice-data plans -- Google would partner with the likes of downtrodden Sprint, prepaid phone companies that resell the bandwidth of VZW, say, MetroPCS types and offer an Android phone with ONLY a data plan. Unheard of in the cell industry. VOIP, and data the thinking went would draw the digirati, and Google's web offerings would seduce the rest. Nothing came of the rumors. I think it's a brilliant idea, and I would for one buy an Android phone, with a sub $50 monthly data plan, and use it and Google services with abandon. I do now! Fuck, you should hear me scream at my Garmin, or Google 411's dolt AI when I can't find what I'm looking for quickly enough. I like, I consume their ads, shit I disable ABP, NoScript, and other shit on their properties because I want the ads. I shut them off however when I want to sift through lots of data and I'm on modem speeds; I would't do that if I could use my affordable Android phone all day long, even on EDGE or whatever.
Google, I hope you're reading this.
Hmm. Here in the UK on Orange I got my phone (a Cliq/Dext - I know, I know, but it's been good to me at least) effectively for free - a SIM only package with unlimited texts, calls and ~500MB data would have been £25/month. My package, with a free phone? £25/month.
Then again, there is some serious competition in our marketplace. Not a lot, but some. Go regulated markets!
Be smart, help people!
nah. it's $10 diff between contract and non-contract plans on t-mo.
no plan: $530 phone + $60 / month * 2 years = $1970
plan : $180 phone + $70 / month * 2 years = $1860
so yeah, it works out about the same actually ... except with no plan, you have the freedom to tell them to get lost if they aren't providing the service you want.
Lets make it ILLEGAL for corporate blood sucker carriers to monopolize any free markets and terms. Lets get retro and smash AT&T back into a bunch of Baby Bells, again. Then we'll hear a pin drop for a better price, better service, and a Sprint policy of correcting any billing overcharges because the customer is always right. While were at it, we'll turn back the clock to before Verizon contracts were spawned by Satan...then lets....I better quit while I'm ahead, before any nudity or violence occurs.
No wonder it failed. They never even sold it outside the US.
no keyboard no thanks, I'll stick with my G1.
Whoops math fail. Forgot to account for the difference. It should read 30*24 = 720, so you are paying $350 up front for $720 in savings.
Math fail again? :) You didn't subtract the $350 from $720 to show the actual savings.
Prepay for phone: $50*24 + 529 ($1729)
2yr contract: $80*24 + 179 ($2099)
So, in exchange for paying an extra $350 up front for your phone, you'll save a grand total of $370 over 2 years (~$15.42/month). I guess that's worth something.
Throwing in the towel after only one model?
Maybe some of us didn't buy in because the Nexus One didn't have the feature set we wanted, not because we didn't like to buy things online or preferred to go with a contract (duh).
What the hell...how old are you, 13?
No, just the poor 30 something year old sucker that went through WinMo 2003, WinMo5, and WinMo6 for over 5 years because there was essentially nothing else on the market offering the "functionality". Going from that garbage to Android was like when Dorothy stepped out of black and white and into color. The suck of WinMo is too profound for words so when someone actually says something as stupid as the GP did in somehow praising it, one can only laugh.
in Chicago
So the N900 is for people who live in New York, NY, or Chicago, IL, or otherwise within cycling distance of a Nokia flagship store. What phone should geeks who live in the rest of the country buy?
I know a couple now former Motorola VP's (Left the sinking ship) and basically they stated that the future were in services, not the devices, at least if they wanted to make money. But Motorola won't enter the services game because they don't want to damage relationships with their existing customers (telecos) by offering any type of competing services.
Google makes money by getting eyeballs to serve ads too. They are in the service business and make that money whether or not an Android phone is made by Motorola or HTC or whomever.
The telecos have realized this as well. They look at what Apple's done with the iPhone and it won't be long before the carriers move to lock down Android to only their marketplace. It's already happening in Australia according my friends down there. Want to buy an app, they block the google marketplace and you can only buy apps from their store.
The carriers look at being about to take a 30% cut in every app sold to their customers as a way to maximize revenue per customer (Their holy metric). And they look at what happened to AT&T and how they pretty much got turned into the dumb pipe for the iPhone.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
What is the number one complaint against the iPhone, Android's main competitor? The fact that it's only available on one network, AT&T, and it sucks.
So what network does Google decide to use for its flagship phone? The one carrier that is worse than AT&T: T-Mobile.
I mean seriously, what did you expect?
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
They're spending fortunes on ads, right now, they must have the money to spare. I don't think they've considered what they're doing
They own the online advertising platform, and it is well possible they are filling the gaps in advertising created by the recession.
Dennis Onstenk
Google's biggest mistake was only selling the N1 in the US where people don't like buying a phone outright. The demand from Europe, Australia and Asia was fairly high compared to the US but we had to wait for 3rd party resellers to get it and then pay a premium (US$520 != A$900 at a 0.9:1 exchange rate). They should have made more deals with carriers, personally I'd prefer the N1 over a Desire as I like the vanilla Android interface over HTC Sense as of right now I can only get the Desire in Australia from a carrier (but then again I bought a Milestone (GSM Droid) outright for A$550).
Google understands the Sunk Cost fallacy, they realise that they don't have the expertise and resources to maintain a retail front for one product and that it would be far easier to let 3rd parties such as existing phone retailers and carriers to sell the product. This store pretty much fell into the "too hard" and "too expensive" basket.
Google clearly did not have the experience nessasary to deal directly with the public (and I'm an Android fan). Google has realised this and rather then trying to haphazardly throw money at it to fix it they've written it off as a bad idea and terminated it. Google can still get the N1 (N2 and N3) out there, but through intermediaries who are set up to deal with the public.
Having owned a HTC Dream and Motorola Milestone as well as having several mates with N1's I'm confident to say that Android is going from strength to strength.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
There are no GSM carriers who offer 3G access in my corner of the state, but both Verizon and Sprint work just fine. It's too bad the Nexus One never came out for CDMA networks because I've been wanting one for the last six months. Of course, the reason I want one so bad is important to the situation: my coworker happens to have one, so I've got to hold it in my hands and see exactly how sweet it is for myself. Had I never actually got to use one, I would have never ventured $500 on Google's word: "Trust us, it's sweet."
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
I don't think they've considered what they're doing.
I'm pretty sure they've considered it, they're a business for goodness sake.
They gave limited options on aquiring the phone. If I could have bought one subsidized and stay on my family plan, that would have been two more sold.
I know I'm not alone here as I found a petition online, and signed it, asking them to offer them with family plans. T-Mobile has done away with MyFaves, so changing to any other plan would cause me to lose the MyFaves (which saves us a great deal on minutes).
The whole thing seems crazy, almost as if they WANTED it to fail. People will buy on impulse. Just look at all the people that bought a 2G Iphone, knowing the 3G was on the way, or the Ipad with no 3g, knowing a 3g version was on the way. I hadn't had my myTouch all that long, and was ready to toss it in for the Nexus one. All they had to do was provide me with the means to do it, without shooting myself in the foot.
And as far as being "locked in" to my carrier, they have the best rates.... I don't want to go with anyone else anyway. Buying my phones with a contract allows me to own phones I would not otherwise be able to afford. It seems like either google or T-mobile just didnt want this phone to sell.
I wanted to buy it but they did not want to sell it to me because I don't reside inside the frontiers of the Empire.
I understand that dummies like the content mafias bosses, music, books and film publishers, and other ignoramuses want and try to put doors and frontiers to the Internet. But I never thought Google would do the same dumb thing.
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El Guerrero del Interfaz