by Zach F

Created on: June 12, 2010   Last Updated: July 16, 2010

Google’s Nexus One phone, produced by HTC, has started off with slow sales, even causing Goldman Sachs to cut its estimates of the phone’s sales.  Although the phone has many competitive features, its branding has been weak so far, especially from Google’s carrier partners.

This lack of enthusiasm for a single phone on the part of carriers is easy to understand, given that many now offer multiple smart phones, so focusing all energy on marketing one, especially by demonstrating its advantages over competition, could actually hurt overall phone sales.

To recover from Nexus One’s slow start, Google should take marketing the phone into its own hands.  The branding efforts should focus on some particularly appealing features of the Nexus One.

First of all, the Nexus One is one of the few phones available on two networks, and unlocked.   The Droid, iPhone, myTouch, and G1 are all available only through one provider, or need to be specifically unlocked, which although not difficult to do, is an inconvenience to a customer searching for a different provider.  Having a phone available with two providers, T-Mobile and AT&T, allows consumers to choose the network features and pricing which best suit their needs.  Having the phone unlocked is even more empowering.  Should the networks raise their prices or should the level of service drop, or fail to keep up with the competition, a customer who likes their phone can move to another service without worrying about the expense and hassle of changing phones.

Another advantage which the Nexus One has over some other smart phones is a flash camera.  As anyone with a T-Mobile G1 can tell you, having a camera phone with no flash can soon get frustrating.  The Nexus One offers a full-featured, flash camera.

Nexus One also has an advantage over other, older Android phones in that it is using Android 2.1 technology, and will move to 2.2 when that technology becomes available.  These features include features like pinch to zoom, first made available on the iPhone, which older Adroid models don’t offer.

Android phones generally have advantages over other groups of smart phones.  The platform is open development, which means for business owners or even just amateur programmers looking to play around, anyone can program an individual phone, or create applications to be made available to other Android users through the Android Marketplace, which is

• 1
• 2
• Next Page >>