{"id":2799,"date":"2010-12-08T16:20:31","date_gmt":"2010-12-08T21:20:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2799"},"modified":"2014-03-19T14:21:09","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T18:21:09","slug":"the-smartphone-wars-google-changes-aim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=2799","title":{"rendered":"The smartphone wars: Google changes aim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I just got a look at the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/nexus\/\">promotional video for the Nexus S<\/a>.  What it reveals about Google&#8217;s Android strategy is fascinating, and suggests that the pressure on Apple and the telcos is about to ratchet up another notch. <\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>The Nexus S, for those of you who haven&#8217;t been paying attention, is the successor to the  Nexus One, the original Googlephone. Similar looks, identical price point ($529 from Google, $199 with T-mobile contract).  HDSPA radio capability, which means it can use T-Mobile&#8217;s 3.5G network.  Android 2.3 &#8220;Gingerbread&#8221;. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/phone\/detail\/nexus-s\">Spec sheet here.<\/a> This would have been the Nexus Two if Google CEO Eric Schmidt hadn&#8217;t for some now-forgotten reason  promised there&#8217;d be no Nexus Two.<\/p>\n<p>HTC is on the sidelines &#8211; this is a Samsung handset.  And it has the NFC (near-field capablility) that Schmidt recently highlighted as a key feature for next-generation phones.  He&#8217;s basically said up front that Google aims to replace conventional credit cards and the credit-card companies are OK with this.  Hey, if it talks to their payment systems they don&#8217;t care.  Not having to ship and manage as many physical cards will lower their costs.<\/p>\n<p>The video tells us some very interesting things about how Google is positioning the Nexus S.  And, because Google isn&#8217;t stupid and doubtless test-marketed and focus-grouped the product pretty carefully, that in turn tells us a lot about what Google thinks the state of the smartphone market is and where the battlegrounds of the next phase of the smartphone wars will be.<\/p>\n<p>First message: Google thinks that this time it&#8217;s got an iPhone killer that can capture the youth\/hipster\/trendoid market. The video is aimed squarely at teenagers and fashion victims just as surely as the Nexus One was positioned as cutting-edge techno-cool for geeks and salarymen.<\/p>\n<p>Second message: This thing is being marketed squarely as an organize-your-world information appliance.  I&#8217;m not certain I ever saw an actual phone call occur in the video, and if there was one it went by so fast that I missed at.  No, the focus was actually on augmented-reality apps &#8211; using the phone display as an information overlay on your physical environment.<\/p>\n<p>Third message, and the stinger in the tail:  Near the end, the video says &#8220;Pure Google&#8221;.  Yes, this does seems to mean that Google has read consumer disgust with carrier skinning and lockdown and decided to actively market the uncompromised Android experience against the carriers.<\/p>\n<p>On the assumption that Google&#8217;s market-intelligence people haven&#8217;t been taking stupid pills, this sets up a prediction: Apple and the cell carriers are about to take a hard punch in the face.<\/p>\n<p>If this seems overly optimistic, reflect on the way that Android phones have so far been winning every market Google has chosen to throw them at. <em>All<\/em> other smartphone OSes have been losing relative market share. Carrier efforts to capture, cripple, and own-brand  Android have already, as I&#8217;ve noted in my reports on the G-2, stumbled badly.<\/p>\n<p>The most interesting second-order implication of &#8220;Pure Google&#8221; is that Google now thinks it can say a loud public fuck-you to the telco carriers  and get away with it.  Big change from July when the Nexus One got pulled from the Google store, a move many observers (but not me) took to mean Google had lost the power struggle with the carriers.  I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s much doubt who has the whip hand now.<\/p>\n<p>And as for Apple&#8230;their strategic problem just got dicier.  The N1 wasn&#8217;t designed to go head-to-head with the iPhone on &#8220;user experience&#8221; and wasn&#8217;t marketed that way either. The Nexus S, from this video, squarely is. Apple fanboys may be too worshipful to think this is a real danger, but I think Apple&#8217;s planners know better.  Watch for an increasing marketing emphasis on their tablets and media\/entertainment delivery as a leading indicator that they&#8217;re conceding defeat in phone handsets.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I just got a look at the promotional video for the Nexus S. What it reveals about Google&#8217;s Android strategy is fascinating, and suggests that the pressure on Apple and the telcos is about to ratchet up another notch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-2799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-smartphone-wars","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2799"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5576,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions\/5576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}