limit supply to boost demand
Hey, they are learning from Apple!
Google's Nexus One phone was a flop as a sold-direct-to-consumer "superphone," but according to the company, it's a huge hit in its new incarnation as a developer platform. With a blog post Friday morning, Google Android man Tim Bray announced that the Nexus One developer phone has already sold out and that the company is …
When Google was selling the Nexus One retail, it restricted sales to certain countries. Furthermore, the sites you menu were charging ABSURD markups on Google's price. I recall Expansys expecting people to pay ~700 euros for the device.
So unless you were lucky enough to live in the few blessed countries, or stupid enough to pay a ridiculous markup, you couldn't get one of these phones.
It's nice to see they have a life after death but I expect it would be cheaper and as productive to buy an HTC Desire these days.
... I don't believe Google has killed off the Nexus One yet; I suspect they are just marking time.
The Nexus One is, in my eyes, everything a smartphone should be: Unlocked, open, and not subject to Provider (Vodafone) / Manufacturer (Samsung) whims.
Where's the halo-ed schmidt logo?
Apparently people woke up and realized that the Nexus is the only Android phone that's running "Vanilla Android", aka the original version of Android by Google .
All the others are running "custom" versions, possibly with proprietary software inside or other third party modifications. Which means that you can't just fetch the source from the android source archive and expect it to work on your phone.
So, when it comes to getting the next version, it's all up to the manufacturer (and it's eagerness to sell new devices, I am looking at you HTC with the Hero) or to weekend hackers like Cyanogen.
Some months ago, when Google announced they were killing the Nexus, it always seemed a bit odd to me. Android 2.2 had just been rolled out, and the Nexus was the only freaking phone that run 2.2!
I got my nexus one delivered in the UK in January, 5 days after it came out. I didn't have any problems getting it, I needed one for development, I got one, period.
Its a nice phone. Its main developer benefit is it gets the lastest versions of Android first, and its not encumbered with proprietary UIs.
I imported one from Google and then found I could get a second for free when I moved from o2 to Voda. So I did just that, now I have my everyday phone and my dev phone. BTW Vodafone sell the Nexus One as it came from Google; unlocked and unbranded so it now runs froyo and supports tethering - which is not explicitly banned in my contract which also has no data limit...
I wanted to get a Nexus One for development. Of course the day I finally get around to it was the day they took their retail market down. When they announced that they would sell them to developers, I haunted the dev site until they went on sale, and bought immediately.
It's nice to use an unadulterated Froyo phone for development. The extra benefit is that I can retire my unlocked Palm Treo 680 for my trips to Europe and use the N1.
If you can't get your hands on a Nexus One the next most 'open' phone your going to find for Android is going to be from the Samsung Galaxy-S family of phones.
Samsung has been much better then other manufacturers when it comes to open sourcing their stuff and, unintentionally or not, made their phones much easier for people to hack on then any other platform out there.
Not to mention that the performance for these phones is better then any other phone out there, except for some I/O for the onboard flash (which can be fixed).