Google defends Nexus One sales model

Posted 24th May 2010 at 2:59pm by Ewan Taylor-Gibson

After Google changed its plans to sell the Nexus One exclusively online and it emerged that Vodafone would not be joining it in this scheme, the firm has spoken out to explain the events.

"I think what happened was that we changed our distribution model and couple of weeks passed by before we announced it and some of our partners made some product changes before we had the chance to announce it," said Google's Andy Rubin during a developer's conference last week.

The Nexus One arrived in early 2010 but its online-only sales plan was only recently ditched due to lacklustre sales in the US, with Vodafone announcing that it would stock the Nexus One in-store for UK customers to try.

Vodafone and its US partner Verizon Wireless had originally intended to join in with Google's webstore sales, but they later retracted these plans.

Mr Rubin admitted that the search giant had suffered a setback with its plans to change mobile buying habits.

He stated: "From a technology perspective, I think the Nexus One was the showcase superphone at the time and that set the bar. To be revolutionary in the way people buy phones? That didn't happen."

Google was apparently unprepared for the complexity of operating the webstore and instead decided to "focus [its] resources on the platforms and the apps to make the platform shine rather than hooking into provisioning systems and billing systems," he added.

After half a year working on the US webstore, Google realised that it could not replicate this on a global scale and decided to focus on the software of the phone itself.

Mr Rubin was questioned about the development of a Nexus Two smartphone to replace the current flagship Google mobile, but declined to comment.

More news on: Business, Retailers, Android mobile phones, Smart mobile phones, Google, Google Nexus One

4 Comments

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Techtotaller, 24th May 2010.

Talk about defending the indefensible. The Nexus One's ratio of hype to sales is one of the worst ever. And for the reason, look no further than that sales model. It meant that everyone went off and bought HTC phones instead.
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Raidet, 24th May 2010.

It just wasn't a good enough handset. They had one chance - make it at least as good as the iphone 3gs at its own game - user experience. THEN you can start talking about changing the way people buy. It's no good chucking out a second-rate phone with ludicrous problems like multitouch failure at launch then wondering why you didn't change the world.
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Knopfler, 24th May 2010.

I though the Nexus One was better than the iPhone. However, the HTC Desire is the best phone known to man!
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Person, 25th May 2010.

It was not about the handset. Why? Because plenty of worse Andriod phones sold better. It was either the pairing of T-mobile which no-one wants to use as a carrier or the disputation model.
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