New York — Google Inc. last week announced that will close down its 4-month-old online store for its Nexus One smartphone, abandoning an ambitious plan by the Web search leader in a deliberated move that signals the failure of its bid to market the device directly to consumers on the Web.
“While the global acceptance of the Android platform has exceeded our expectations, the web store has not,” Google Vice-President Engineering Andy Rubin said in the post.
The Internet company in a post on Google’s official blog, said the web store, which opened in January, had not matched expectations, and it would instead work with wireless carriers to make the phone available to consumers through existing retail stores.
Google said its Web store would transform into an “online store window” where it could showcase a variety of phones built with its Android software.
“Once we have augment the availability of Nexus One devices in stores, we will stop selling handsets via the web store and will instead use it as an online store window to display a variety of Android phones available globally,” Rubin said.
The reversal comes nearly five months after Google seceded with convention, and just shortly after Sprint Nextel and Verizon both scrapped plans to support the Nexus One phone that Google sold online and represents a significant scaling back of Google’s ambitions in the wireless industry, said BGC Financial analyst Colin Gillis.
Google will end online sales of the Nexus One smartphone, above. (Image Credit: Reuters)
“They clearly have retreated from the model of revolutionizing the method in which we acquire our smartphones,” Gillis said.
“It has remained a niche channel for early adopters,” Rubin said of the Nexus One store. “But it is very distinct that many customers like a hands-on experience before buying a phone, and they also want a wide range of service plans to chose from.”
The move “makes me wonder if that is it for Google doing devices,” Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of SearchEngineLand.com, said in a blog post, adding that “now it seems likely that there would not be a Nexus Two.”
The handset, which was manufactured by HTC Corp., has sold for $529 — a price well above that of many carrier-subsidized smartphones — and then sign up with a carrier of their choice. It costs $179 for U.S. customers that commit to a two-year contract with Deutsche Telekom AG’s T-Mobile USA, the only U.S. carrier to offer a plan for Nexus One.
“We believe that the changes we are announcing today will help get more phones to more people quicker, which is good for the entire Android ecosystem: users, partners and also Google,” Rubin wrote on Friday.