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By Rob Garretson
In a bid to boost unimpressive sales of its Nexus One smartphone, Google on Tuesday released a version that works with AT&T's 3G network in the U.S. and with Rogers Wireless in Canada.
The addition to its online store comes on the heels of a report from mobile analytics firm Flurry that the search giant has sold about 135,000 units in the 74 days since it released the device for T-Mobile, the same time it took Apple to sell 1 million units of it iPhone and Motorola to sell 1.05 million of its Droid smartphone.
Like the Nexus One for T-Mobile, the new version runs Google’s Android operating system on a 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU from Qualcomm. It’s equipped with 512MB of ROM, 512MB of RAM, and a 3.7-inch AMOLED 480 x 800 touch screen and is 11.5 mm thick and weighs 130 grams . It includes a 5-megapixel camera with an LED flash, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and two microphones for active noise cancellation, and it supports stereo bluetooth connections.
But unlike the $179 Nexus One for T-Mobile, the AT&T/Rogers-compatible version costs $529 unlocked and is not yet available at a subsidized price with a two-year contract from either carrier. The new version supports the three 3G/UMTS bands used by both AT&T and Rogers (850/1900/2100 MHz) and four GSM radio frequencies (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), while the original model introduced in January uses T-Mobile’s three 3G/UMTS bands (900/AWS/2100 MHz).
Without a carrier subsidy, the new model is not likely to provide a major boost in Nexus One sales, observers note. In addition to lacking carriers, Nexus One sales have been hampered by early glitches, including Google’s acknowledgement that some users complained of both 3G network connection problems and poor customer support, prompting Google to add a dedicated customer-care phone number.
"As Google and Apple continue to battle for the mobile marketplace, Google Nexus One may go down as a grand, failed experiment or one that ultimately helped Google learn something that will prove important in years to come," writes Flurry VP of marketing Peter Farago in a blog post.
Google execs say there are pleased with Nexus One sales volumes and that it’s only one of many Android devices hitting the market and creating the necessary developer ecosystem to succeed.
“The Nexus One is one of a fast growing number of Android handsets which have been brought to market through the open Android ecosystem,” a company spokesperson told Information Week. “Our partners are shipping more than 60,000 Android handsets each day compared with 30,000 just three months ago.”
The new Nexus One model is likely to be the first of several this spring. In January, Google said it expected Android phones from Verizon in the U.S. and from Vodafone in Europe to appear in its Web store by springtime, with additional partners to come.
Unlike the Nexus One smartphone, Google’s broader Android platform has been gaining market penetration quickly in recent months, having more than doubled its share of the smartphone operating system market to 5.2 percent in the final quarter of 2009, according to Web measurement firm Comscore, though it still has lots of ground to cover on the market leaders.
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