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Flagship Android device, unlocked, without contract, for $299. Impressive. From the marketing video it looks like Android 4.2 gained Swype-like keyboard. It
by klausa 14y ago
Flagship Android device, unlocked, without contract, for $299.
Impressive.
From the marketing video it looks like Android 4.2 gained Swype-like keyboard.
It seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10 (i.e. it has status bar on top, navigation buttons are in the middle of the screen). That's weird, and I definitely don't like it, but it might not be that big of a problem.
- wmf 14y agoYeah, these prices look almost too good to be true. Other Android vendors may be getting some serious indigestion from this.
- gms 14y agoNexus 7 devices are being sold at a loss, so I suppose in one sense yes, the price there is too good to be true.
- jonknee 14y agoSource?
- trimbo 14y ago> Nexus 7 devices are being sold at a loss Back in June... and only for the $199 model...
- bryanlarsen 14y agoWhat I heard is that Google isn't making money on them, but ASUS is.
- cmatthias 14y agoI'm not quite sure whether there was ever an original source for this claim other than a bunch of tech blogs parroting each other, but iSuppli shows that this was false, at least as of July 11th: http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-Nexus-7-Carries-$157-BOM-Teardown-Reveals.aspx http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/pages/Low-End-Google-N... Sure, if you add in the $25 Google play credit, and leave room for some margin for Asus (since Google is just a reseller), you might get close to breaking even, but as far as I can find, the Nexus 7 was never sold at a loss.
- gms 14y agoI stand corrected; thanks.
- illumin8 14y agoIf the device is free (or close to cost) then buyer beware... The device is not the product; you are!
- RShiki 14y agoIt's not sold at a loss, but with a very low profit margin. At a loss would mean that they're actually bearing the cost of manufacturing the device even after they got your money, which is not true. They also get a much higher profit margin on the 16gb (now the 32gb for the Nexus 7) than on the 8gb which is what a lot of people will buy. There isn't a $50 cost in manufacturing a device with 16gb more of storage but there is a $50 markup for the customers who want more local storage. Storage is much, much cheaper than what you're paying for when you buy a tablet or phone with bigger SSDs. The profit margins on the 64gb iPhones are INSANE compared to the profit margins on the 16gb. The base, $300 Nexus 4 is going to have a paltry 8gb. Most of the heavy users are going to spend the $50 more for the 16gb, while the $300 will still be there to please those who have to be more careful with their money.
- Rastafarian 14y agoWhen you factor in the huge R&D costs, the cheapest models are definitely sold at a lost.
- jug6ernaut 14y agoWhile I have no hard figured I believe the cost difference is because Google is probably selling these devices at or around there cost. They are selling them (like how amazon does with their tablets) as content delivery systems. Simply as a way to get more people to into the google ecosystem. Other companies must sell their devices to make a profit, google does not. As long as they are close to making even on device cost they can make up for and exceed it elsewhere.
- icebraining 14y agoBut Google doesn't make the devices, LG does.
- mattmanser 14y agoI thought Apple's app store makes a fraction of what they make on the phones? Although Google's profit's are in the billions, so are their users. Their profit per user is actually pretty small to be running an at a loss hardware device. And we can't pretend that people don't use their ecosystem on other devices anyway. I honestly have no clue at what Google are trying to achieve sometimes. I mean it makes sense for Amazon, but Google? Not so much.
- Retric 14y agoLast I checked it was the other way around, iTunes and the App store are basically run at cost to get people to buy more devices.
- jonknee 14y agoNo, but the profit made is tiny in comparison to the giant margins they make on iOS devices ($700 iPhones that cost $175 to make really pad the bottom line).
- _djo_ 14y agoIt does not cost $175 to make, that's just the estimated bill of materials (BOM) cost. The actual cost to manufacture includes labour, design, shipping, testing, storage and dozens of other things. Apple's gross margins on its devices, essentially the selling price less the manufacturing costs, is about 30-40% company-wide. That translates into an operating margin (which includes all costs) in the 20-30% range. That's high for a consumer electronics company, but not as high as the $700 - $175 comparison makes it sound.
- gutnor 14y agoOther vendors have already failed, except on the low cost. Samsung rules the phone market, it is everyday closer to become synonym with Android and could be tempted to secede like Amazon. That is not a good situation for either Android or Google - and except Google breaking the price, there is little else that can revive the market a little bit.
- fluidcruft 14y agoGood luck if Samsung thinks they can strike it out on their own without Google Play, Google Maps and Gmail.
- kevin_p 14y agoThey already did in China. My wife bought a Galaxy S2 in January, and it came with Samsung Apps instead of Google Play, no Google Maps, no Gmail or Google Talk etc. Yes, it's a legitimate Samsung product, not some Chinese knockoff. She's hugely disappointed with it and refuses to buy any more Samsung products. (It doesn't help that she refuses to let me root it and install CyanogenMod, but you don't expect to have to do that if you're paying the equivalent of over $600 US for a phone)
- yohui 14y agoI wouldn't assume that was Samsung's choice. Isn't that a legacy of old disagreements between Google and the PRC? I know that Asus Transformer Primes sold in China did not come with Google services, either, though buyers quickly learned that using a US/Taiwan/International update file would restore functionality fairly easily.
- kevin_p 14y agoChina's situation does have something to do with it (you can't buy paid apps on Google Play here, YouTube is blocked and Google search frequently has 'technical problems'), and that's probably Samsung's excuse, but other manufacturers manage to keep Google services on their phones (although often alongside their own or another 3rd-party app store). I think it's just Samsung taking advantage of the situation to avoid paying Google's fees, not a case of gapps being legally banned in China.
- distantparts 14y agoYou can't imagine that Samsung will be thrilled about the Nexus 4. The Galaxy S3 suddenly looks poor value, and that's their flagship device. It was selling in big numbers, and although it's cheaper than the iPhone 5, presumably it's still a very profitable device. If Google are determined to sell high quality devices at cost to gain market share, and can make the general public aware of this (non-trivial), Apple may find itself as the sole company making big profits from actually selling phone hardware. That said, only Samsung with their Galaxy brand have come anywhere near the marketing impact of the iPhone, so if Google really want to make an impression, they're going to need market these devices at a level that they've never managed before.
- objclxt 14y agoYou have to wonder whether Motorola are best pleased about it either - it's hardly a ringing endorsement that Google have farmed the Nexus 4 out to LG rather than use the device manufacturer that they own.
- wmf 14y agoGoogle said the Motorola integration will take 12-18 months. The Nexus 4 was probably being designed before the acquisition.
- gamble 14y agoI'm waiting for them to shut Motorola down. It's generating huge losses, yet Google is doing nothing with it. And they've stated the patents are all Google values.
- Supermighty 14y agoThese devices have 18 month lead times. Give them some time. The next round of devices from Motorola should be heavily influenced by Google by then.
- voltagex_ 14y agoThe Nexus 4 maxes out at 16gb available storage and there's no expansion. It only really competes with the base model S3. It's Samsung's own fault they haven't got the 4.2 update out properly yet.
- jeswin 14y agovia Gizmodo: Quad-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB RAM, 8GB storage, 4.7-inch 1280 x 768 display, and an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera. Impressive indeed!
- jusben1369 14y agoIt's interesting they havent' done a front facing camera. That's big with the tween crowd. Edit: I meant rear facing on the Nexus 7. Not front facing.
- tonfa 14y agoNexus 4, 7 & 10 have a front facing camera. (Nexus 7 doesn't have a rear facing camera though)
- RShiki 14y agoI don't see the point of a rear camera on a tablet. The kind of people who have enough spending income to afford a tablet usually own a smartphone, or even a feature phone, that has a rear camera. Why would you want a crappy rear camera on your tablet ? for a $200 price point like the Nexus 7, you'd never get anything better than what a cheap feature phone can do. Any kid that has a parent that would buy them a Nexus 7 has at least a feature phone with a camera that'd be as good as what you could put on the N7, if not better.
- Shivetya 14y agoIf they have a feature/smart phone why would they want a 7 inch tablet? I would love the option of a good camera on the 7 that was one feature of the iPad that my niece really took too. The only problems being that the regular sized iPad is a bit too large for her and for me its a bit too expensive for her to run around with. The new iPad mini has a good camera but also an obnoxious price. It may be that refurbished iPad2 or even iPad 3rd gen are a better deal.
- RShiki 14y ago
- WrkInProgress 14y agoThe $299 version is the 8GB version. The 16 GB version is $399.
- elboru 14y ago*16 GB is $349
- mladenkovacevic 14y ago$359 here in Canada. Unbelievable price. That's how much I paid for my Galaxy Nexus USED!
- elboru 14y agoYeah really impressive, two weeks ago I was about to purchase the Galaxy SIII with a 2 years contract for $500 dlls (yeah really that's the price here in my country). That would be a really bad mistake...
- jeswin 14y ago16GB is $349, not $399. http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/29/nexus-4-official/ http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/29/nexus-4-official/
- dsmithn 14y agoThat's the phone, not the Nexus 10 tablet which is $399.
- donniezazen 14y agoFinally someone stood against anti-consumer carriers.
- dude_abides 14y agoVery impressive pricing! On the other hand, it doesn't support LTE. When will Google realize that basic things like fast network speed are more important than fancy things like face unlock and NFC.
- rryan 14y agoMore info: http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-not-have-4g-lte http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/29/3569688/why-nexus-4-does-...
- tomjen3 14y agoHonestly why do you want LTE? You are going to burn through your data alotment very, very fast.
- illumin8 14y agoYes. Some of us have unlimited plans.
- wpietri 14y agoNot necessarily. I've had LTE since July and am very happy with it. I don't use crazy amounts of data, but when I am using it I like the zippiness compared with 3G.
- mahyarm 14y agoWith LTE everywhere comes bigger data allotments. It's very easy to get 10/10 Mbps with LTE.
- eco 14y agoWhat I like about LTE is the decreased latency (rather than the higher peak speed).
- mortenjorck 14y agoThat's what I thought would happen before I got an LTE phone, but in practice, I'm not burning through it that much faster – I'm mostly just following the same usage patterns I had with 3G, just spending less time waiting.
- dazbradbury 14y agoUnfortunately they are selling it for £239 in the UK, which is more like $380 - Still an absolute steal for a headline retail price, but not quite the incredible £185 I thought it would be initially. So for now, having paid only slightly more for my sim-free S3 months ago, it's not that good a deal. Still patiently waiting for a nexus with a hardware keyboard like the good old days...
- adhipg 14y ago> paid only slightly more I see SIM free S3's selling for around the £500 mark. How much is the slightly more?
- knotty66 14y agoThat's actually a lot better than the deal the UK got on the ARM Chromebook released last week, which was priced at $249 in the USA and £229 in the UK. After taking 20% VAT into consideration, that's only a x1.07 premium compared to the US price as compared to a x1.23 premium on the Chromebook, which is actually unusually good. Often we see dollars converted directly to pounds. Strange that the conversion is not consistent - can anybody speculate why?
- josteink 14y agoIt seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10 (i.e. it has status bar on top, navigation buttons are in the middle of the screen). That's weird, and I definitely don't like it, but it might not be that big of a problem. Good catch. This will hopefully be configurable on custom ROMs, as I'm with you on this one: I don't want this on my 10" tablet.
- scubaguy 14y ago>> It seems that they're no longer using tablet UI, even on Nexus 10 Maybe this is for consistency. I find it a bit of a mental shift when I used the Nexus 7 with the tablet UI. I assume I'd prefer the status on top look & feel on the Nexus 10 as well. I know not everyone prefers status & notification on top, but I'm used to it and I like the consistency of it across phone & tablet.
- yohui 14y agoStatus bar up top is probably fine. I would think though that sticking the navigation buttons in the center while in landscape mode would be aggravating. I would rather have the buttons rotate while the bar stays on the narrow end. That would even be consistent with the actual phone UI.