Nexus One was a one off, says Google CEO

Posted on 5 Jul 2010 at 17:40

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has said that the Nexus One was a one off designed to help its Android mobile operating system along.

“The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward,” said Schmidt in an interview with the Telegraph. “It clearly did. It was so successful, we didn’t have to do a second one.

“We would view that as a positive but people criticised us heavily for that,” he added. “I called up the board and said: ‘OK, it worked. Congratulations – we’re stopping’.”

Schmidt said that Google likes to be flexible and believes that it enables what is quite a large company to be very nimble for its size.

While we can see Schmidt’s side of the story, what made the Nexus One successful from our perspective was the fact it was an unlocked handset with very impressive specifications and direct access to the latest firmware updates.

Of course, the original business model which offered an unlocked handset for sale only directly from Google was a failure, but it has been a success with tech-savvy users looking to tinker once the company had worked out how to sell the device.

Author: Tim Smalley

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