If there is anything that the poor sales of the Google Nexus One proves to me, its the control, the evil control rather – that the US carriers have over the mobile market. Long before Google unveiled the Nexus one, it was rumored that Cupertino is cooking plans to end the carrier raj in US. In their small way they did, however Nexus One was tied to T-Mobile. Selling solely over the Internet, NexusOne is surely rated high by the power users. I can see the craze amongst my friends on twitter here in India (with a few luck ones getting the device already).
So why did it do just 80000 units in the first month? Just to give you a better idea, the Motorola Droid did 525,000 units in the first month just a few months back, and the 3GS did 1.6 million in the first week itself. Verizon has pushed the Droid beyond belief and BOLD ads targeting the iPhone were out. All possible forms of media were used for this promotion and perhaps that’s where NexusOne lost some ground (traditional supply change and media). But its clear that selling the device unlocked and not keeping it exclusive to a single carrier is what priced Google Nexus the most. T-mobile is far from pushing the NexusOne like what Verizon did with the Droid and given that the phone is ordered online via Google; T-mobile certainly isn’t a key player in the entire chain.
Not that Google didn’t have an idea of how tough it would be to challenge the market scenario, they are certainly getting ready with the NexusTwo that Motorola is working on. To an extent the Nexus One sales might have been affected by the 3G issues reported early on, but with all those issues fixed (and multitouch now added), the real test for Google’s plan begins now!
If I hadn’t already bought a Motorola Droid, I would have bought the Nexus One. I wasn’t buying Android until 2.0. When that hit, I was all over it. I would have happily changed carriers to get it, too.