P Lorne

I just bought a Nexus One.

Here are 5 reasons why I think it’s going to end up being just another nice smartphone for geeks… and may also trigger a reverse in the movement Android so smartly introduced a year ago.

1. The business model is supposed to revolutionize the industry. In fact, Google wants to distribute it directly, bypassing the Mobile Carriers.
I think this is a mistake. Even Apple – which has always retained such tight control of its distribution – has agreed to rely on carriers to distribute the i-phone. By bypassing carrier distribution channels Google are ignoring 80% of the potential market.

2. Direct consequence of #1 : The price is therefore not subsidized, and paying $529 for a phone is just not something many people (except die-hard geeks) will be ready to do.

3. Google has under-estimated the effect of impulsive buying.
I mean, the way it usually happens is, one day you say ‘I want to change my phone’, so you go into a shop, you buy it and when you exit it works – all configured.
But when you buy a Nexus One, first you order it on the Internet (that’s fine), then when it arrives you need to put your sim card in, read the f**** manual, import all your contacts, configure your email, and eventually enter the MMS parameters by hand. Then you realize that the 3G doesn’t work with your ATT sim card (only Edge works on Nexus One). That’s just far too many steps – far too much hassle for me, for my wife, and for most people I know.

4. Handset vendors (Samsung, Sony Ericsonn, and even Nokia) were planning to release between 30% and 80% (in the case of Motorola) of their handsets based on Android. I suspect that they were to discover that their most important software partner is competing against them. I think we’ll see that in 2011, handset manufacturers have immediately reviewed their Android roadmap and reduced the release to far lower than initially planed.

5. Handset vendors will now need to differentiate more than ever, they won’t trust Google as much, and they can’t rely on Android like they were going to. This means that, even though they might keep Android core components, they will most probably push harder on building their own ‘home-made sauce’ on top of it. This is going to increase fragmentation and destroy Google’s promise to have a universal easy to port OS. More fragmentation means less developers, less apps and less customers.

It seems to me, as though we’re jumping 10 years back, to when Sun promised a standard java for mobile phones. Imagine if Sun had proposed to build their own phones!