What’s Really Slowing Down Nexus One Sales?
In the past few months, smartphone sales really took off. In the fourth quarter of 2009 about 50 million devices were shipped by vendors; compared to 2008 that’s an increase of about 39%. If you take a look at the smartphone market, Nokia still holds the largest share with 39%, followed by RIM (Blackberry) and Apple with 14.4%.
The Nexus One started selling at the beginning of this year. All in all, Google managed to sell about 80,000 devices in January. Compared to that, Apple sold about 600,000 iPhones and Motorola sold 525,000 Droids in their first months. So what are the reasons for the slow start of Google’s “superphone”?
A few possible reasons were already named in this article:
- Lack of expenditures on traditional marketing campaigns (unlike other smartphone producers)
- Google’s direct-to-consumer approach, which is unusual (you can’t purchase a Nexus One from a retail store or a telephone provider like T-Mobile; it’s sold through this site only). I don’t quite agree with this as a reason though. A new approach in selling, like this one, can work even if it is unusual. If people aren’t met with too many obstacles and see that the process is uncomplicated, they will order anyway; whether they do that on T-Mobile’s site or the one of Google.
Although the lack of a traditional marketing campaign certainly puts the Nexus One at a disadvantage, I think that people actually consciously decide against buying one. It’s important to consider this fact: many consumers are in the process of acquiring their very first smartphone. It’s a big step for people who aren’t young tech-enthusiasts and who were perfectly fine with their old cell phone. Now if you were about to pay a large sum of money for a device you’ve got no experience with whatsoever, would you choose one from a known/trustworthy cell phone manufacturer or one from a company behind a search engine?
Google means nothing on the mobile market yet. For now, they can’t compete with a company there that nowadays makes three out of four mp3-players and thus managed to gain a lot of trust from consumers in the past years. Many people are used to iTunes and the way their iPod works. They want to have the same functionality on their cell phones. On the other hand anyone deciding to buy a Droid, will trust Motorola as a well known cell phone manufacturer behind it.
Google is also lacking that whole “smartphone ecosystem”. Apple is so successful because they control every part of the user experience. From iTunes, over the iPod functionality on the iPhone, to the App Store. Everything works together well and is 100% adapted to the Apple product you are using. And yes yes, you can get apps for the Nexus One too, you can listen to music on it and you can somewhat sync it with your computer but does it feel as refined, as integrated and as user-friendly as the experience Apple offers? Unfortunately, it doesn’t yet.
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Girl Goes Tech (GGT) is about a 26-year-old, female tech-addict exploring her geeky side and writing about social media, mobile trends and applications.