“The move follows Google’s short-lived effort to market a handset called the Nexus One, which was released in January and discontinued in the summer,” Efrati reports. “The new model, the Nexus S, will be introduced in the U.S. in mid-December and sold exclusively at Best Buy Co. retail stores and on Best Buy’s website. It will cost $199 with a two-year T-Mobile USA contract, and be sold for $529 without a service contract.”
“Google licenses the Android software free to hardware makers such as Samsung. The company won’t make any money from direct sales of the Nexus S, a Google spokesman said,” Efrati reports. “Android is designed to ensure that Google’s Internet search, maps and other services will be a mainstay on mobile devices. The company sells ads alongside its Internet search results and helps place ads within mobile-device applications such as game. Two months ago Google executives said the company was on track to generate $1 billion annually in mobile-related revenue.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In related news, Ford Motor Company unveiled the Edsel S.
The only smartphone news that will really matter in 2011 will be Apple iPhone’s arrival on Verizon and the massive impact it will have on all players in the cellphone market: handset assemblers, carriers, resellers, chipmakers, touchscreen makers… everyone.
@predrag
A nicely constructed argument. However, as someone with 30 years of IT experience, starting as a programmer in the 70’s, i see a vast difference between IOS and Android. Android may have the look and feel of IOS, but it not built on the same foundations, and does not have the support of Apple’s visionary infrastructure.
Apple is a huge threat to Google. With the Verizon iPhone release, apps developers are going to find that the market for new Android apps declines significantly, while IOS developers will find the opposite. And IOS developers have a whole pile of machines which run the same code, pretty much. iPhone, iPod Touch (the world’s leading mobile games platform now), iPad and, without too much of a stretch, the Mac, including OS/X Server.
If Android developers refocus on IOS, the application gap will increase significantly. And apps get really old, really fast.
If Apple succeeds in knocking Android back to an also-ran, Google will lose huge market share in search, maps, docs, and all the other pieces of their strategy.
It is a game played for high stakes and Apple appears to hold all the cards. All you can see in front of Apple at the moment is blue sky. And lots of it.
And Goooogle blatantly copied the iPhone all the time while Eric “the mole” Schmidt was on Apple’s BOD.
How this isn’t an actionable offense I’ll never understand. Didn’t MoleBoy have to sign NDAs or the equivalent?
If it’s not bad enough that Android has ripped off the iOS, now the Nexus S website has ripped off the “Apple” form too.
I thought the human species had had grown beyond a mindless parade of Windows/MS robots. Looks like I was wrong and we are all doomed to live with folks that just can not except a great thing when hits them in the face. Literally.
@ byronic
It’s not surprising that someone with your background can see the difference between Android and iOS. The problem is that the average US consumer couldn’t see — or doesn’t care about — that difference even if it were painted on their eyeballs. Most of the US has bought into the Walmart mentality: quality is irrelevant, price is the only factor, IP ownership only matters to lawyers. Only short term, sound-bite thinking is allowed. So for the majority of US consumers, a look-and-feel approximating iOS at a lower price, even with lower service levels, is the item of choice. It’s the same with US politics. In the end, it’s just sad.
No s’more, no sir.
No sPhone for me.
“The hell if I’m gonna pay you a bloody $529!”
http://snltranscripts.jt.org/96/96hjeopardy.phtml
Nexus Suck (S)
@ 8^þ
Don’t discount the attachment to verizon. For some people AT&T is not a choice. For others its too costly to switch telco.
People choose Apple for many reasons. The customer demographic Is probably very similar in that regard. Some will know they are buying a 2nd rate product, others will neither know nor care. It is the same story with iPhone customers. Some know why the iPhone is superior, but a lot of people have no idea but they believe apple’s message or like to be associated with their image.
People are the same everywhere.
I don’t have all that much respect for a great deal of the public these days, and am sad to see this dumbed-down country slide further back as China and other countries beat us in innovation, production, and hell- we owe them. “USA! USA! USA!”
“Drill, baby, drill!”
Disgusting. I’ll never forget the actor playing Bill Gates in “Pirates of Silicon Valley” saying to Steve Jobs- “You don’t understand! It’s not about what’s best!”
And Windows “wins the desktop wars.”
Why? Because people are stupid.
Nexus S = Nexus Snailmail
@ auramac
Since having renewed and record-breaking success with the Mac business over the last five years or so, I don’t think Apple really cares if the statement “people are stupid” is generally true or not. “Business” is about making profit, and with both Mac and iPhone, Apple makes most of the available profit in their respective markets, withOUT being close to having the highest unit sales. I guess there are plenty of “non-stupid” customers out there, and Apple offers them something that is uniquely desirable. When you can only get it from Apple, you get it from Apple.
(It’s even better for iPod and iPad, where Apple makes most of the profit WITH dominating unit sales.)
On the other hand, most of Apple’s competition sell indistinguishable products, and compete based more on price and volume than anything else. This is especially true for PCs (everyone except Apple licenses Windows). When you compete based on price and volume, profit per unit keeps heading down.
The same thing is starting to happen in smart phones, with Android becoming the “commodity” OS. Unfortunately for iPhone’s competition, Apple (by making one very popular phone model for the entire world) also has the volume pricing advantage. “Android” is NOT the brand; the “brand” is Samsung, Motorola, HTC, etc. Each is selling a relatively small number of phones for each of their multiple product lines. So Apple’s singular iPhone has high quality, distinctiveness, and competitive pricing.
And Apple can stay ahead of the iPhone “competition,” because Apple generates those huge profits to keep it going. If you define “competition” as the other handset makers, they have neither Apple’s volume advantage nor high profit per unit. If you define “competition” as Android, Google does not make any direct profit from Android, only indirect profit from advertising. Over the course of years, how can they even “afford” to compete with Apple.
“Two months ago Google executives said the company was on track to generate $1 billion annually in mobile-related revenue.”
Okay, we know how much Google is making off the iPhone, are they making anything off of Android?
@ The Other Steve
They said they are “on track to,” which is executive-speak for, in the best case scenario imaginable, we HOPE to… blah blah whatever.
And you pointed out something is obvious, once you pointed it out.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” /> “Mobile-related revenue” is much more than what comes from Android.
What surprises me about how the Nexus S looks is not just that it is a blatant iPhone ripoff, but that it also incorporates the retrograde appearance of an old Palm device with the 4 permanent buttons at the bottom.
Didn’t the industry out grow hardware button mania? These are touch interface phones. Right? So buttons are supposed to be just GUI elements.
Oh I forgot: Google brought zillions of hardware buttons back into fashion with their Google TV monstrosity. My faux pas.
Apple, as any other firm, needs competition.
It’s too easy to become sort of M$… look, Win 7 would have never happened with no OSX around neither…
@Predrag.
Do you have the data that supports an Android success story over Apple where the two are offered by the same carrier? ie. In Europe, I believe Android is still running a distant 3 rd to both Apple and Nokia. Additionally, once Verizon acquires the rights to the iPhone, I believe it’s lights out Android.
For goodness sake, there is only so much copying that you can do before the whole world realizes that Android is a copycat device. The only thing it has going for it -when I read the specs- was the hotspot feature. Other than that ,I’ll pass on this one. Prefer the real thing.
@RickW
Apple is not influenced by competition. If you look at what they do, they apply their own values and create new products which set the benchmark in the markets in which they compete. The iPhone would have happened whatever the competition was doing, or not doing. And of course the iPad is groundbreaking…
The Nexus S; the shadow of the wrapping of the chocolate bar that is the iPhone.
LOL, MDN banned my post when I basically said that Verizon will not be the savior for the iPhone vs. Android that MDN think it will be…a bit touchy are we MDN?
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…”he only thing it has going for it (…) was the hotspot feature. Other than that, I’ll pass on this one. Prefer the real thing.”
I think we can safely agree, most of us here will pass on this one (or any other Android) and prefer the real thing.
My point is, the rest of the world is NOT most of us. Most of THEM simply don’t understand, or are not aware of, the difference between the two.
Someone said in the other ‘Radio Shack’ thread, that they tried to get the discounted iPhone in three different Radio Shack stores. They didn’t have it in stock, but salesman immediately went into the scripted pitch “Oh, but iPhone is so last year; we got something much better here!” and proceeded to steer him towards several Androids on different carriers. This guy received exactly the SAME pitch in all three stores he visited.
Ordinary people will swallow that bait, completely with hook, line and sinker. This is how Android sells, and when a salesman tells them it’s better, they buy it and remain convinced that their phone is in fact better than Android.
And no, Samsung, Motorola, HTC are NOT brands. Android is precisely the brand, as that is what customers are seeking out. Nobody walks into a mobile store to buy an HTC (or Motorola) phone. They either look for a ‘Droid’, or they look for an Android phone (if not for an iPhone first, obviously). Samsung, Moto, HTC, etc., have become commodity; more accurately, they have failed to elevate their individual brand above the commodity status that the US carriers have made them to be. Android could have been their chance to elevate themselves from there, but other than Moto Droid, which was able to build a little bit of a brand recognition, they managed to drown their brands into the vast pool of Android goo, spiced up with carrier branding and customisation.
Hey ford is better then google:
ford was (I think) the only us car company that survived without a bailout, that takes work, my hat goes off to them, even though they are kinda drowning, the f350 is a good truck, unlike the nexus s.
ford doesn’t spy on you, or force you to be connected to the internet to use there truck
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From the article: “Android is designed to ensure that Google’s Internet search, maps and other services will be a mainstay on mobile devices.”
Google has a problem there, though. Because Android is open-source, free, software, they have no way of ensuring that Android phones use Google services. In fact, at least one Android phone is sold preset to use Bing as the search engine.
And about the Verizon “rumors”: I’ve been firmly in the “I’ll believe it when I see it camp” for years. However, when a rumor reaches the point where it’s starting to influence the market, and neither party issues a denial, that’s a good sign the rumor is true. I mean, another story on MDN today states that the “rumor” is affecting Verizon’s sales. Wouldn’t it be in Verizon’s interest to quickly deny it if it weren’t true?
——RM