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Google sells just 20,000 Nexus One smartphones in first week

17 points by ukdm 17y ago

fierarul 17y ago
It's going to get better once they start selling it outside of the US. From the outside it also looks like they are under a lot of negative press -- which seems a bit dubious and probably a sign of being some kind of threat to either operators or cell phone competitors.
- yason 17y ago
  We shall see but I hope so. As soon as they'll start selling Nexus in Europe I'm seriously considering buying one even if I have a perfectly good cell phone already. Also, as an European I am -- and our operators are -- used to "unsubsidized" unlocked phones so that won't be a problem either.
pierrefar 17y ago
Does anyone know of a customer service/support story where Google ends up being shown in a good light? I've heard this so many times with AdSense, AdWords, and Google account users that simply got disabled without any recourse or a chance to talk with someone about anything. And now Google wants to do a consumer-focused play by selling directly to the end users and surprise, their lack of customer service mentality is not helping them.
- bjplink 17y ago
  People hardly ever go out of there way to make a fuss when a company has good customer service or handles a support issue well. Sometimes the negative minority is just the most vocal. For instance, most people have PayPal accounts with no problems for years but the few that have issues write long blog posts about them and start sites like paypalsucks.com.
jacquesm 17y ago
That seems to me to be a pretty rough guess. They took some apps and estimated penetration based on the new registrations of those apps. That's not exactly hard data, the title suggests it is.
- andrew1 17y ago
  I agree. From the article: > Flurry drew up the estimate based on new handsets appearing in its data over the launch period allowing it to give quite an accurate prediction. Given that they have nothing to validate their numbers against, how can they claim that they're 'quite .. accurate'?!
  - dagw 17y ago
    They've used the same method for other phones, where the manufacturers have eventually released sales numbers. If their numbers are accurate for those phones then they can make assumptions about the accuracy in this case.
    - andrew1 17y ago
      But you can't say that a prediction is accurate until you have the actual data. They could still be wildly wrong in this instance; for example Nexus One users may be the early adopter types who will install loads of applications, thus artificially inflating the perceived number of phones out there. Until Google actually release figures about how many were sold the prediction can't be classed as accurate or inaccurate.
whalesalad 17y ago
This has to be due to the fact that Google didn't do/have any sort of marketing. Every other phone had a carrier behind it as well. It's an apples to oranges comparison! The iPhone 3GS had two previous iPhones to pave it's way, the Droid had all kinds of viral marketing going for it from Verizon, the MyTouch had a lot of marketing from T-Mobile with stars like Whoopie Goldberg and Chevy Chase. The only thing that Google had behind it was geeks like us who read HN and blogs like Engadget.
- millettjon 17y ago
  I would have liked to have seen marketing dollars per units sold. How long will it take for TMobile to get back the 100M they spent on marketing? This is Google's first offering in a new market and the limited marketing will buy them time to ramp up operations in a controlled manner.
  - scrrr 17y ago
    They already had the G1, another HTC phone with Android.
- dagw 17y ago
  Yea I think the author completely misses the point when he writes "I expected at least another digit on that number due to the buzz surrounding the device." All I can say is "what buzz?" Outside of some small geek communities, most people haven't heard of this phone. No one is talking about it and as you say no one pushing it, there simply is no 'buzz', and never really has been. That's the problem with extrapolating from a tiny circle of homogeneous friends to the general population, you end up with a very skewed image of reality
scotty79 17y ago
Nexus One is to smartphones as Chrome is to browsers. Nexus One is to android phones as Chrome is to Firefox. It's not a revolution, it's not instant blockbuster. It's just Google trying out good things as always.
- wendroid 17y ago
  Indeed, they were coy in the press pre launch. They didn't do a massive dry ice launch. Jobs announced iPhone with "Today, we are introducing three revolutionary products." Compare that to "One question we asked ourselves some time ago was what if we work even more closely with our partners to bring devices to market which are going to help us showcase quickly the great software technology we're working on here at Google," Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management at Google said. "We've done just that."
bentlegen 17y ago
One theory: people like subsidized phones.
- jraines 17y ago
  And: people already have subsidized phones, with contracts that prevent them from getting another one for a while. I'm still locked in to the G1 I bought in November of '08. People who were waiting on the next big Android phone probably just bought a Droid, with contract.
dannyr 17y ago
I tried getting the Nexus One subsidized but I was told I'm not eligible. I still have about 9 months left in my contract which started when I bought my G1. I know a lot of G1 owners looking to upgrade but unfortunately, we can't unless we pay the full price.

17 points by ukdm 17y ago

It's going to get better once they start selling it outside of the US. From the outside it also looks like they are under a lot of negative press -- which seems a bit dubious and probably a sign of being some kind of threat to either operators or cell phone competitors.

yason 17y ago
We shall see but I hope so. As soon as they'll start selling Nexus in Europe I'm seriously considering buying one even if I have a perfectly good cell phone already. Also, as an European I am -- and our operators are -- used to "unsubsidized" unlocked phones so that won't be a problem either.

pierrefar 17y ago

Does anyone know of a customer service/support story where Google ends up being shown in a good light? I've heard this so many times with AdSense, AdWords, and Google account users that simply got disabled without any recourse or a chance to talk with someone about anything. And now Google wants to do a consumer-focused play by selling directly to the end users and surprise, their lack of customer service mentality is not helping them.

bjplink 17y ago
People hardly ever go out of there way to make a fuss when a company has good customer service or handles a support issue well. Sometimes the negative minority is just the most vocal. For instance, most people have PayPal accounts with no problems for years but the few that have issues write long blog posts about them and start sites like paypalsucks.com.

jacquesm 17y ago

That seems to me to be a pretty rough guess. They took some apps and estimated penetration based on the new registrations of those apps. That's not exactly hard data, the title suggests it is.

andrew1 17y ago
I agree. From the article: > Flurry drew up the estimate based on new handsets appearing in its data over the launch period allowing it to give quite an accurate prediction. Given that they have nothing to validate their numbers against, how can they claim that they're 'quite .. accurate'?!
- dagw 17y ago
  They've used the same method for other phones, where the manufacturers have eventually released sales numbers. If their numbers are accurate for those phones then they can make assumptions about the accuracy in this case.
  - andrew1 17y ago
    But you can't say that a prediction is accurate until you have the actual data. They could still be wildly wrong in this instance; for example Nexus One users may be the early adopter types who will install loads of applications, thus artificially inflating the perceived number of phones out there. Until Google actually release figures about how many were sold the prediction can't be classed as accurate or inaccurate.

whalesalad 17y ago

This has to be due to the fact that Google didn't do/have any sort of marketing. Every other phone had a carrier behind it as well. It's an apples to oranges comparison! The iPhone 3GS had two previous iPhones to pave it's way, the Droid had all kinds of viral marketing going for it from Verizon, the MyTouch had a lot of marketing from T-Mobile with stars like Whoopie Goldberg and Chevy Chase. The only thing that Google had behind it was geeks like us who read HN and blogs like Engadget.

millettjon 17y ago
I would have liked to have seen marketing dollars per units sold. How long will it take for TMobile to get back the 100M they spent on marketing? This is Google's first offering in a new market and the limited marketing will buy them time to ramp up operations in a controlled manner.
- scrrr 17y ago
  They already had the G1, another HTC phone with Android.
dagw 17y ago
Yea I think the author completely misses the point when he writes "I expected at least another digit on that number due to the buzz surrounding the device." All I can say is "what buzz?" Outside of some small geek communities, most people haven't heard of this phone. No one is talking about it and as you say no one pushing it, there simply is no 'buzz', and never really has been. That's the problem with extrapolating from a tiny circle of homogeneous friends to the general population, you end up with a very skewed image of reality

scotty79 17y ago

Nexus One is to smartphones as Chrome is to browsers. Nexus One is to android phones as Chrome is to Firefox. It's not a revolution, it's not instant blockbuster. It's just Google trying out good things as always.

wendroid 17y ago
Indeed, they were coy in the press pre launch. They didn't do a massive dry ice launch. Jobs announced iPhone with "Today, we are introducing three revolutionary products." Compare that to "One question we asked ourselves some time ago was what if we work even more closely with our partners to bring devices to market which are going to help us showcase quickly the great software technology we're working on here at Google," Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management at Google said. "We've done just that."

bentlegen 17y ago

One theory: people like subsidized phones.

jraines 17y ago
And: people already have subsidized phones, with contracts that prevent them from getting another one for a while. I'm still locked in to the G1 I bought in November of '08. People who were waiting on the next big Android phone probably just bought a Droid, with contract.

dannyr 17y ago

I tried getting the Nexus One subsidized but I was told I'm not eligible. I still have about 9 months left in my contract which started when I bought my G1. I know a lot of G1 owners looking to upgrade but unfortunately, we can't unless we pay the full price.