Google Nexus One docs get leaked: $530 unsubsidized, $180 with plan
boygeniusreport.com
boygeniusreport.com
There goes my post-christmas geek present to myself. Without the massive cost savings that had been rumored, I have zero incentive to pay out of my Verizon contract.
If the 'non-Apple' part is an issue then why aren't you buying an iPhone?
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/2009/12/28/flurry-app-store-sees...
Google only cares about things with a data connection, and I firmly believe that WiFi only devices are a small enough market that they're just a distraction for the big names right now -- except Apple, since the iPod touch kind of bridged an established product with the at-the-time new phone platform.
Archos released it way before the software was ready, but with the latest firmware updates, it's excellent.
http://daringfireball.net/linked/2009/04/13/isuppli-shuffle http://daringfireball.net/2007/07/isuppli
There are also much more difficult issues of heat dissipation and power consumption.
Finally, you have to pay for tons of patents used in every phone. I guess Google does not have a good cross licensing contracts with Qualcomm/Nokia/others since it probably does not own any essential patent in this area.
You also pay for tons of interoperability testing Google has to run.
The laptop cost $1600 when I bought it. Why are we complaining about a $500ish phone?
I'm especially annoyed that this piece of hardware appears to have a AT&T compatible 3G chipset but is disallowed in the baseband. To me this is just another piece-of-crap restricted-use telco-friendly piece of hardware, this time with Google livery. To pay for an unsubsidized phone and not get all of the features that the hardware is clearly capable of (modulo patents: multitouch) is offensive, and makes the $550 to me even more irritating.
The whole thing is slightly less appalling when you think of the phone as another iteration of the G1 and MyTouch for T-Mo and not as an honest attempt by Google at offering an open device.
If I could code conveniently on my phone, I wouldn't use my laptop for anything. I've switched over to my phone as my primary web browser, e-mail client, music player, thumb drive, GPS, atlas, address book, camera, and game machine.
I find phones nice for their niche (almost-computer when you aren't near a computer), but if I was sitting next to a laptop and a phone, I would only use the phone for phone calls.
(But, to be fair, capacitative touch screens and 3G modems are not cheap parts.)
Incidentally, given that we sort of know what the pricing is (I suppose they could be aggressive about dropping the price later), what's the strategy here for Google? Just worried about cannibalizing sales of other firms that use Android? Why even bother putting out their own phone or being so involved with Motorola in the development of the iDroid?
As far as I can see, buying outright always works out cheaper than a hefty plan with all the trimmings included
The real carrot for me was the idea of a prepaid $29/mo data only plan, which I actually thought was believable. T-Mobile already offers pretty much the exact same plan ($1/day) for prepaid Sidekick users (voice is 0.15/min.) I barely use voice (~100 minutes/mo), and if I could drop my unlimited text/internet/450 voice plan for something that was only $29, I could definitely learn to live with the quirks of VOIP on a mobile handset and the loss of MMS.
Honestly, even if you threw me in a contract to get the phone at $199, as long as data was that cheap I'd gladly sign up for two years the same minute I was sending Verizon their $350 good-bye letter.
I don't use my phone as a phone and am sick of having to pay so much for minutes I just don't use. The cost of my voice plan before data and text is around $40/mo, which works out to me paying .40/minute for what I use. Even if I used real voice instead of Google Voice I'd be saving money.
Not to mention at that price they'd be dealing Apple a major blow. I figure they have the cash, why not use it for something like this. I admit this is all idle speculation on my part, and that Google may or may not have a lot at stake in the success of Andriod.
The only interesting conclusion from the article seems to be that Google is confident that Nexus One would be able to compete one on one with the iPhone on features and usability, hence they offered no major discounts to get the customers.
However, you can easily get a 15% discount by having .edu email address or most companies get the same discount which usually offset the various fees and taxes.
It's a compelling value proposition as a VOIP/Google Voice phone.
T-Mobile has an unlimited data plan for $40, add in unlimited text messaging for $10. The TCO for a 24 month nexus one on this is $1580. As opposed to the $2360 for an iPhone. That $800 difference could be the tipping point for a lot of people.
Will it work for data, kinda.
The nexus is on the 3G band that T-Mo uses (as does most of the rest of the world I believe) but not the one AT&T uses, so you'll be stuck on Edge (which sucks) if you want to use it on AT&T.
PS. This isn't a software issue as the commenter above says, well it is, but it isn't software anybody is going to be changing anytime soon. (radio firmware)
I'll be swapping from my BlackBerry Bold as soon as this gets fixed. Maybe I'm crazy for not wanting an iPhone since I'm already on AT&T and want to stay with them as a carrier but this looks like the first device I'm willing to switch to instead of a BlackBerry after making the swap a few years back from an Nokia N61.
I think they have something up in their sleeves. My guess is its mostly software-related though - new Android features or cloud/mobile services.
Easy access to your Google Docs. I believe there are apps on the market that does this but Google might integrate in the core of Android.
Native Google Task App.
Also, I would really respect Google for using some of its billions of dollars to subsidize the phone to the $99 price point and take tons of market share (thus creating a huge incentive for app developers).
Sadly Google seems content to release just another phone.
easy to suggest when it is not your billions of dollars being thrown away ;-)
"This device, sold at or near cost, " (as jsz0 suggests) is a more reasonable strategy, since (a) Google's main revenue streams are not affected (probably enhanced) and (b) Apple and Nokia can't compete without reducing their profit.
That said, I think Google is a sufficiently big company now to have mediocre middle managers who'd scuttle such "radical" ideas.