A little more than six months after Google promised to change the way mobile phones were sold and create the “superphone” category, it has officially stopped selling the Nexus One through its Web site. That’s not because it actually did change the way mobile phones were sold or blow the competition away with a revolutionary design, but because people didn’t buy them and Google stopped ordering new units from HTC.
The Nexus One was born in January amid breathless hype from the tech industry, hailed as the smartphone that might save the world from an Apple-dominated market. It died a quiet death on a gloomy San Francisco summer day, forever a reminder of the limits of Google’s ambition even when it has a good idea.
The Nexus One was, and is, an excellent phone, and few regular people will line up to defend the two-year-locked-contract and exclusive-phone system so beloved by the wireless industry. But it turns out that selling phones in a crowded marketplace is hard, especially when people are used to buying them in stores and you can’t advertise through conventional channels for fear of alienating your other partners.
The Nexus One was born in January amid breathless hype from the tech industry, hailed as the smartphone that might save the world from an Apple-dominated market. It died a quiet death on a gloomy San Francisco summer day, forever a reminder of the limits of Google’s ambition even when it has a good idea.
The Nexus One was, and is, an excellent phone, and few regular people will line up to defend the two-year-locked-contract and exclusive-phone system so beloved by the wireless industry. But it turns out that selling phones in a crowded marketplace is hard, especially when people are used to buying them in stores and you can’t advertise through conventional channels for fear of alienating your other partners.