It has a long way to go… about 80,000 Google Nexus One mobile phones were sold in its first month on the market, according to analytics group Flurry Inc - just one-eighth of the figure achieved by its biggest rival, the Apple iPhone in the month after its launch.
The phone’s sales remained steady in each of week of its first month, Flurry’s data shows, but there are suggestions that selling the phone free from any contract with a mobile operator is proving a weakness, and a gamble which has not paid off.
The most recent comparison in terms of sales immediately post-launch is with Motorola’s Droid phone. Like the Nexus, this is equipped with Google’s Android software, and this achieved first-month sales of 525,000 last November, the nearest challenger so far to the iPhone’s estimated 600,000.
When Google launched the Nexus One in January, it said it would sell the phone direct to customers through a web store, which it hoped would help it achieve cost and efficiency savings compared with selling through the network providers’ high street stores and other bricks-and-mortar outlets.
Observers also lay some of the blame for the Nexus’ lacklustre sales at Google’s decision not to mount a major marketing campaign for the phone, and its high price.
In the US, the phone is available for $179 on a two-year, $40-a-month contract, or for $529 unlocked for use on any network.
Of course, other analysts have also put the Nexus One’s sluggish start down to pure bad timing on Google’s part. Its January 5 launch meant it missed the crucial Christmas/New Year sales period, meaning that “a lot of the people who were in the market for a phone, either for themselves or for a gift, already satisfied that demand,” according to Peter Farago, Flurry’s vice-president of marketing.