Why the Nexus One isn’t exciting
The public release of Google’s phone was news but not an event yesterday. (The New York Times used “some polite applause” and “shakes but doesn’t upend” in its coverage headlines.)
Why? Because Google didn’t physically make the phone.
In partnering with HTC, a company that produces cell phones for every US carrier and two different operating systems, Google ceded control of the overall experience. Never mind that the handset is slim and fairly attractive. It’s also generic, and apparently imperfect. When David Pogue pushes your phone’s home button, you really don’t want it to fail.
There’s a huge difference between designing and engineering a device, as Apple did with the iPhone and Palm with the Pre, and a company having a device “built to its specifications”. Google was telling HTC, “We want our phone to do this,” and HTC was putting the requisite componentry in place. This tends to minimize holistic product definition and by its very nature waters down the innovation. In contrast, Palm and Apple (and Motorola and Nokia, for that matter) manage the entire process, and their software is designed to complement the hardware, maximizing user experience. Google, a company that is strictly virtual, doesn’t know how to do this.
Software companies that venture into hardware have to embrace the role of hardware manufacturer. This is true beyond smartphones: consider how Microsoft, which built an empire on software, hit a home run with its Xbox by controlling the end-to-end product creation. (Microsoft makes great computer accessories, too; I’m using a Microsoft keyboard and mouse right now.) But we never saw a Microsoft-branded PC produced by Compaq in the 1990s. All or nothing.
Google is a formidable company with incredible technological prowess. I’m not placing bets against Android just yet. The relative mediocrity of the Nexus One, though, is exactly what we should have expected.
I’d be more excited if the phone had the Sense UI on top of it. 2.1 isn’t really that much of an upgrade from 2.0. I really think Google needs to standardize on the release of updates. Phone manufactures are never going to be able to keep phones up to date: everyone was working on upgrading to 1.6 when 2.0 hit, now 2.1 is out and there are still phones on 1.5
I’m sure you could easily repeat this blog entry in the coming months/year(s), once Google’s Chrome OS is released and sold – Available only on a netbook as far as I have heard.