In an article subtitled, “What a load of Schmidt,” Cade Metz reports for The Register, “Google CEO Eric Schmidt has convinced himself that the company killed its sold-direct-to-netizen Nexus One phone after less than six months because it was ‘so successful.'”
“‘The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did,’ Schmidt told The Telegraph, demonstrating just how far removed from reality his mind has become,” Metz reports. [Schmidt continued,] ‘It was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one. We would view that as positive but people criticised us heavily for that. I called up the board and said: ‘Ok, it worked. Congratulations – we’re stopping.’ We like that flexibility, we think that flexibility is characteristic of nimbleness at our scale.'”
MacDailyNews Take: “We like our strategy. We like it a lot.” – Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer after Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone. Obviously, CEOs who face Apple crack mentally after a while. Those who weren’t already cracked when they started, that is.
Metz continues, “At launch, Google said that the Nexus One belonged to a new super class of handset — even though it couldn’t match the Motorola Droid (according to none other than Google open source guru Chris DiBona) — let alone the iPhone.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Eric T. Mole is off in self-delusionland with his “superphone,” right where Steve Jobs wants him.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Dirty Pierre le Punk” for the heads up.]
Yeah, that’s the stuff!
the real reason nexus one failed:
http://www.abrahamstech.com/2010/07/nexus-one-has-too-many-syllablesthats.html
It was too much bother trying to operate a real business and trying to make real money. And we’re so rich from advertising we’re just going to give everything away cuz having real customers all over the world is really, well, a bother.
One can’t overemphasize the leap of faith it took Apple to open actual stores–to deal with the messiness of retail.
And nothing shows the difference between the companies better.
Google dabbles in a million different beta projects. Apple does a few things and goes all in.
And, btw, google IS evil. Every one of those betas diminishes or kills an opportunity for a smaller organization to do something really well. Not to mention that their revenue source is based on monitoring your browsing habits to learn everything possible about you: the web at its frightening worst.
Isn’t the Nexus One the only Android phone that can run the latest Android OS release? And it’s cancelled?
It was cancelled because you can’t be the supplier of the OS to hardware partners and also be a competitor with your own phone, an in-house product that will obviously get preferential treatment for OS updates and compatibility. Microsoft “pulled a Zune” to compete with its media player partners, and look where that went…
“I like french-fried potaters…”
@TowerTone:
Wishful thinking ? Shhhhh….Don’t be afraid. You can come out of the closet now….