A report suggests that the Google Nexus One hit 20,000 units sold in its first week. Given Google's purpose here, is that a low or high number?
A few weeks before the release of the Google Nexus One, we believed that Google was likely going to offer the phone unlocked to developers. On January 5th it became clear that Google had other plans, and rumors of the search giant selling its own smartphone directly to consumers turned out to be true.
Some analysts predicted that the Nexus One would sell in the millions, likely based on the assumption that the phone would be a strong competitor to Apple's iPhone. Prior to the launch of the Nexus One, it did however become clear that we weren't necessary talking about a super-smartphone. Based on specifications, the Nexus One is as super as most other high-end smartphone out there, but it also shares those phones biggest challenge: How to stand out from the crowd?
The current sales numbers of the iPhone proves that Apple has managed to create a smartphone brand that stands out from the crowd. It simply sells itself. With the introduction of the Nexus One, it's pretty clear that Google wants to try accomplishing the same: Create a smartphone brand that sells itself. With "Freedom to choose" being sort of a slogan for Google's Android effort, the Nexus One also partly represents a vision of "Freedom to choose" as far as carrier strings attached is concerned.
When looking at the Nexus One sales numbers as presented by Flurry recently, the fact that 20,000 people in the U.S. purchased the phone in its first week can only be seen as a milestone. Although these numbers aren't accurate, let's just say that every week in the next year, 20,000 people will buy the Nexus One. We would then end up with 1 million users having opted for "Freedom to choose" in January 2010, led by only one single smartphone. Add ten smartphones to the mix using the same numbers, and you'd get 10 million users.
Our point is that the initial Nexus One sales numbers may seem low, but when looking at the purpose of the sales method we could be seeing the beginning of a revolution here. The fact that Verizon Wireless will soon join Google's new effort can only be seen as a rock solid move towards a new era in the way U.S. consumers will be allowed to operate as far as their "Freedom to choose" is concerned. With new multi-mode chipsets down the road, we hope the LTE era will take it all to the ultimate level, where you can buy a Nexus One with a Verizon Wireless subscription and after a year you can seamlessly move it to AT&T Wireless if you want to. That's a given elsewhere in the world, and the time is ready for the same to happen in the U.S.
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