When Google launched the Nexus One handset back in January, I’ll admit I was intrigued, not by the device itself but by the manner in which they went about flogging it.
You had the choice of getting the phone on a contract via an operator i.e. the traditional route or buying it directly from Google and slotting in your existing SIM card. I thought the latter option was a strange thing to promote, particularly as Google had no previous experience in selling hardware.
In fact, the more I think about it, everything to do with the Nexus One was more than just a little bizarre.
First off, the phone itself was notably dull. Essentially a HTC Desire with a slightly more-appealing face and one or two unremarkable added features, it hardly stood up on a pedestal and screamed out ‘buy me’.
Now surely the great minds over at Google had thought long and hard about producing a phone bearing their famous name, so why oh why did they permit HTC to simultaneously market an identical device (which by the way, most people seemed to prefer)?
Utter madness.
Still, with their considerable clout, you’d imagine marketing even an average device such as the Nexus One would be a cinch.
Wrong.
Whilst Apple were bombarding our television screens with slick iPhone advertisements, the Nexus One was left in online-limbo for only the hardcore tech-geeks to admire.
It was therefore entirely predictable when Google announced in July that they were discontinuing the Nexus One, less than six months after it’s release, with monumentally poor sales rumoured to be the reason.
The post-mortem indicated that the device not only lacked ‘wow-factor’, but also seemed like a big, wet slap in the face to all the manufacturers who produce Android-powered phones. It was almost as if Google were saying to the likes of Samsung, Motorola, Sony, etc ‘you’re not doing a good enough job with our software, so we’re doing it ourselves’, even if that wasn’t the intended message.
The bottom line being the Nexus One was a failure by Google’s lofty standards.
Lesson learned. Or so you’d think.
In recent weeks Cyberland has been buzzing with the news that Google are on the verge of announcing the Nexus Two, this time manufactured by Samsung and based closely on the company’s flagship Galaxy S handset.
If that does indeed turn out to be the case, I forecast here and now that the device will suffer a similar fate to it’s predecessor, unless Google surprise everyone with a box of exciting tricks.
After all, this would once again mean the Nexus phone is simply a mirror-image of an existing handset rather than a device in it’s own right. And that just seems lazy to me.
As a supporter of all things Android, I hope to be proved wrong but have my suspicions that all this Nexus Two tittle-tattle could end up being the mother of all anti-climaxes.
Prove me wrong Google.
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