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> (And yes you can work with local distributors, but that doesn't solve all problems, presents its own set of complex challenges, and sometimes may simply not be economically viable -- e.g. their cut will make the product non-profitable, and there isn't a market to sell at a higher price.)

Cry me a river. I can buy a $150 Nokia at the electronics store down the road, but somehow it's too hard for Google to sell its Pixel lineup (which is not cheap by any means) and make a profit?

They bought a chunk of HTC 3 years ago. HTC has known how to distribute their products for nearly two decades.

Clearly Google sees your part of the world as a third rate market.

You should treat their brand the same way. In the USA, the perception isn't of Google as a quality brand. More of an also-ran.

PS: I love their cloud services. I just don't know why they keep insisting on trying to make their hardware happen.

They bought only parts of HTC, and the parts the purchased didn't include their distribution as far as I can find. We don't even know how HTC achieved their distribution to begin with. Did HTC own the entire supply chain or did they offload that to a 3rd party?

Either way, HTCs supply chain is way different than Googles even with acquisition. And there is no way to know if Googles pre-existing processes would allow them to leverage HTCs distribution effectively if they own it (which I doubt).

You're comparing different things. What Nokia phone are you buying for 150 in your country? Nokia isn't a US company like Google. Nokia if Finnish. So it'd seem likely they'd have figured out EU distribution because they exist in the region and align with EU processes before NA.

Nokia has basically always produced hardware they've needed to ship. Google started as a software company that just so happens to deal in a few hardware projects. When they first bought the Motorola patents they crashed and burned hard on their hardware. And this was after their initial Nexus launch.

If you cannot get a Pixel in your country it's probably not because Google decided they can't make a profit on the phone. It's likely a restriction in shipping they don't care to get around yet, the demand for their devices aren't high enough for them to solve distribution issues, or they just don't care that much about their hardware businesses.

HMD is hardly a European company, but you can replace Nokia with Xiaomi in my argument if you prefer.

Why should I care about how Google's hardware business operates? They sold their first Nexus phone 10 years ago, how many more decades will they need to learn?

> or they just don't care that much about their hardware businesses

Then they should just stop pretending. The Pixel branding and pricing is a joke. At least American customers can wait until the phones inevitably reach $400-450 six months after their launch.

It's not rocket science. It's what every other company making consumer goods for the international market is capable of handling, and many of them are 1/10000th the size of Google.

Google has the resources to do better, so let's stop making excuses every time they fuck up the execution of a product launch because they're too cheap to do it right.

Even ignoring the fact that google has the resources to pull this off easily. In countries where they already have all of that set up, because they sell other products, these issues still exist.

Selling a newer version of a product in a country where the old version is already being sold is not an issue for small companies, and it shouldn't be for google.

I have never had any issues buying Samsung, OnePlus, Apple, or any other brand devices no matter the device category.

In fact last time I wanted to buy a google device (the original pixel phone) I was on the waitlist for almost 2 months before I walked to the apple store and bought an iPhone - and I'm sure I'm not the only one.