Nexus One: ordinary phone, disruptive business model

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Nexus One: ordinary phone, disruptive business model

Is the Google Nexus One really a ground breaking 'superphone', the term used by the company itself? Or merely an Android version of the

By CAROLINE GABRIEL

Published: 6 January, 2010

Continued ...

Motorola has the greatest tightrope act. It has made the biggest splash since the original Android phone, the G1, with its Droid/Milestone and Cliq/Dext launches, and this duo showed it hedging its bets firmly on whether to plow its own furrow on the UE, or follow Google (Cliq runs Motoblur and not even the full complement of homescreen Google services, while Droid has a virtually vanilla Google interface).

The company straddled the chasm further by turning up at Google's event, with co-CEO Sanjay Jha looking rather like a turkey voting for Christmas, trying to make light of HTC's coup of getting Google's weight behind it, as well as getting first access to Android 2.1, the latest release. Only weeks ago, Motorola had scored many brownie points by releasing the first Android 2.0 phone, the Droid, and appearing to be Google's closest hardware ally (indeed, many sources say Motorola had hoped for the Nexus One deal and was trumped by its Taiwanese rival). Jha commented: "I think Nexus One is a good phone. I think Droid is a good phone. I think we will update Droid to the newest [Android 2.1] software. I think that is ultimately good for all of us participating."

But the search engine giant still has major challenges, two in particular. One, its user experience, as showcased in Nexus One, really must be more appealing to consumers than those of Motorola and others, or vendors will feel under no obligation to adopt it. Two, the mass market really must want the carrier model broken. The shift of PCs into the carrier channel - more rapid, so far, than the shift of phones into the open PC-style channel - suggests that subsidies remain more alluring to most users than free choice of network.

As for the Nexus' specifications: it's much as expected. The phone has a slimline design, at 11.5mm thick and a 3.7-inch AMOLED display. Also included are HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and GPS radios, a 5-megapixel camera, compass, 3.5mm headphone jack, noise reduction for calls, a 4Gb microSD card expandable to 32Gb, and plenty of sensors, including those for light and proximity, plus an accelerometer and a multicolor LED backlit trackball. "It's basically an Android clone of the iPhone," blogged Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, as quoted by the BBC.

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