Google Discontinues The Nexus One

Google's first-ever phone, the Nexus One, launched to great fanfare earlier this year. There was talk of the Android handset becoming an "iPhone killer" and speculation that Google's direct-to-consumer sales strategy for its unlocked phone would change the mobile market as we knew it.

But now, some six months after its launch, Google is discontinuing the Nexus One.

ReadWriteWeb reports that dismal sales have doomed the phone: "In the same amount of time it took Apple to sell 1 million iPhones, Google only sold 135,000 of the Android-powered Nexus."

Google announced in a blog post that the final order of Nexus One phones had been delivered from HTC, the phone's manufacturer:

This week we received our last shipment of Nexus One phones. Once we sell these devices, the Nexus One will no longer be available online from Google. Customer support will still be available for current Nexus One customers. And Nexus One will continue to be sold by partners including Vodafone in Europe, KT in Korea, and possibly others based on local market conditions.

Verizon, which was to receive the Nexus One, canceled the phone in April. Sprint followed suit in May and Google shuttered its online store for the Nexus One this past May, as well.

What doomed the phone? Tell us your thoughts in the comments below.

As a short video by Switched demonstrates (see below), it seems a great deal of consumers were unaware of and unfamiliar with Google's phone, which had "no presence in AT&T or T-Mobile shops or websites, and no television marketing campaign to speak of," notes Switched.

WATCH:

Comments

[RegLib2]

12:26 PM on 07/20/2010

I've been thinking about buying a Nexus One for the past 6 months or so. It looked very good.

What kept me from taking the plunge was that I was not comfortabl­e buying something I could not look at and hold in my hand first. I couldn't even find anyone that owned one, to get their first-hand opinion of it.

I guess I'm glad I dithered. Major marketing blunder by Google, with what probably could have been a good product for them.

[Kevin J Shutt]

11:52 AM on 07/20/2010

When time came to upgrade my BlackBerry Curve 8330, I considered the Nexus One because I have always been infatuated with Google and I liked their Web-only strategy. But, in the end, lacking a physical keyboard and having a trackball (when RIM was moving away from them for good reason), I opted for the Bold 9700, which has been a sage upgrade. I now await RIM's Slider 9800 for the "best of both world's" physical UI and the superior business applicatio­ns. While I am not an enterprise user per se, I am a small business and the BB's functional­ity has proven superior for day-to-day out-of-the­-office multitaski­ng and document manipulati­on.

[Eris23]

10:38 AM on 07/20/2010

"There was talk of the Android handset becoming an "iPhone killer""

From who exactly?

[Brutus76]

10:08 AM on 07/20/2010

Called it.

[norkas]

10:05 AM on 07/20/2010

Goggle sat on the board of directors of apple and were subject potentiall­y to proprietar­y informatio­n.

Then googles develops their own phone to compete with apple. I am not sure and this is speculatio­n but perhaps a potential lawsuit yet to be filed and the advice to stay with what you know best especially when it come to competing with an apple product made good sense.

There was some great commercial for android phone but apple lovers such as me and others will not change so fast.

[Abdi S]

09:34 AM on 07/20/2010

I believe google discontinu­e on purpose because this phone is too good to get discontinu­e. Why? It has something to do with apple lawsuits from early the year or google won't explain the reason for there marketing.

[JRsNana]

07:53 AM on 07/20/2010

I like to think that I'm "in the loop" with regard to the world in general. I read, I pay attention, at least I thought so. I had never even heard of this phone.

[bobdob]

06:41 AM on 07/20/2010

This appears to be the top story in the tech section. Meanwhile the code for the lnk vulnerabil­ity (for which SANS has issued a rare yellow alert) has been in the wild since Friday, and is now part of the Metasploit framework. And where is Huffington Post? Nowhere, apparently­. Wow. Just wow. Way to stay on top of things, HuffPo.

http://www­.microsoft­.com/techn­et/securit­y/advisory­/2286198.m­spx

[DTree]

03:12 AM on 07/20/2010

The reason? Zero marketing from Google. They don't have any experience selling *actual* devices, all their products are virtual, so this is a new territory for them. When people think "droid," they think of all those TV ads and Billboards touting the Motorola phone... nothing like that for the Nexus One, so its not surprising they couldn't compete!

[Morgantheaxe]

02:57 AM on 07/20/2010

Still think they let this phone die on purpose. Its a face saving way to get out of the situation that put them in direct competitio­n with companys they were trying to sell their OS too. They have far more wisdom that MS does. Either all in or all out. Half way makes you a fail company. Google chose wisely I think from a business angle. From a I really like gadgets angle Im sad to see them make this choice. They seemed to be spunky in their designs. I mean the Nex one was a good phone from what I read. Very good. We need more of that in the market not less.

[CANTHATBE]

04:17 AM on 07/20/2010

I agree. Your analysis is a lot better than most of the tech writers. I am not buying that Google doesn't know how to market a phone. The Nexus One is a great phone. I just think they wanted to focus more on the real future money maker, the OS.

[KarateKid]

11:34 PM on 07/19/2010

To me, open source means viruses and spyware.

[planetarymama]

12:19 AM on 07/20/2010

To me, open source means WISDOM. take apple's new acknowledg­ement of the fact that pdf is a dominant format on the www, however late. yet in allowing for it they ignore that a massive amount of stuff in pdf has embedded Flash in it. so in saying they have pdf. they are actually LYING THROUGH THEIR TEETH, as they actually have pdf without flash. IN CONTRAST,
TO THIS CLOSED LITTLE CUPERTINO MINDSET, there are upcoming ANDROID OPEN SOURCE PRODUCTS which will have pdf and its embedded flash. THE DIFFERENCE IS NIGHT AND DAY. THE LARGER WORLD is going to turn away from the DARK CAVE
CALLED CUPERTINO because it lacks universal connectivi­ty, as in this example. Any university or engineerin­g firm or government­al agency which adapted IOS4 would be
closing itself off from the worlds wisdom on the www, and that is not going to happen.
APPLE has made itself into dead end company par excellence­.

[KarateKid]

07:43 AM on 07/20/2010

LMAO. What psychobabb­le.

[CamBrown99]

09:05 AM on 07/20/2010

which goes to prove my theory... Apple haters love Caps Lock

[GEM-592]

01:29 AM on 07/20/2010

can't agree with that

[WSAY]

11:28 PM on 07/19/2010

If Google can't make Android work, who can? When Apple announced that they were going into the phone business, I remember everyone claimed Apple was biting off more than they could chew. People said that the phone business is a very tough business and that it would take something truly exceptiona­l to compete.

Well, Apple revolution­ized the industry. Everyone had to switch gears and try and make a product that looked and felt like Apple's iPhone. The Apple haters claimed Apple couldn't do it, and they did it. Some competitor­s did better than others (Android) by simply copying Apple's ideas and avoiding the issue of hardware. However, apparently people were correct that the phone business is a tough business. Apple made the transition­. Google, and others, cannot.

[planetarymama]

12:22 AM on 07/20/2010

this is just ridiculous banter. it does not relate to anything at concerning this thread. just apple
patriotism at a time CONSUMER REPORTS has told the entire world NOT TO BUY THE IPHONE 4 AS ITS DEFECTIVE. DESIGN ERRORS happen. admit it.

[Eris23]

10:44 AM on 07/20/2010

"If Google can't make Android work, who can?"

Where have you read anywhere that the issue was OS related?

[smchp]

09:50 PM on 07/19/2010

Yawn, has nothing to do with the phone. It was because you have to buy it outright at full price of around $500 as opposed to something like the iPhone or other Android phones which you can get for less than $100 on multi year contracts.

[dewfish]

10:24 AM on 07/20/2010

This was exactly the problem right here. Tip to all electronic­s manufactur­ers: If apple is beating you on price, your gadget costs way too much.

[KalinF]

09:46 PM on 07/19/2010

I have a Sprint, HTC Hero, which I believe is a Nexus One and I really like it for business. I've had two blackberry 8830s and two 9630s and this phone has nearly 50% again the phone reception as the blackberry­'s. The document viewer is superior to the blackberry­'s. The screen is superior to the blackberry­'s for internet use, also.

I've never tried an iphone; however, for business, this HTC droid doesn't leave anything to be desired for me.

[cc82]

12:30 PM on 07/20/2010

I have the Hero too, great phone. FYI, it's not the Nexus One - Nexus One actually has better hardware specs.

[baltbear]

07:56 PM on 07/19/2010

google's "core market" is to become the "operating system of social computing"­--just like facebook.
investors cannot "punish" google by doing anything to the stock price. all that can happen is that google's core people ignore the stock price even more.
in the menatime, people from the 90s think apple has something to do with computing, as opposed to home appliances­, when in reality it is nothing more than the sunbeam of the informatio­n age.