Google Is Terrible At Selling Smartphones

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With as much money and resources as Google has, hearing the company's CFO say "we unable to secure sufficient inventory to meet the demand" just seems a bit odd.

Because of these issues, I have long given up on the thought of buying the latest Nexus smartphone while it's hot -- including the Nexus 6 phablet, as much as I would love to grab one. The fault lies consistently with Google. The search giant is terrible at selling smartphones. Even worse, it comes up with a crappy excuse to justify it.
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The nexus phone arent even on my radar anymore, I consider them like the tech demos I see beforehand at CES. Just some vaporware gadget that I'll never actually see in real life. Got tired of their instant sellout bullshit a long time ago.
 
I don't think I've ever seen them in stock on the google play store.
 
Google has developed a 'we know best' attitude which is creeping into all aspects of their business.
 
"we unable to secure sufficient inventory to meet the demand" -- that's not a problem with selling phones, that's a supply chain management issue.
 
What Google should do is change their T&C for manufacturers and make it "persuasive" that they offer the newest fully working and validated GPE "lettered treat" version ROMs such as KitKat 4.4 and Lollipop 5.0 in a timely fashion (supplemental updates would be free...e.g.- 4.4 to 4.4.2) for a lot of phones, but at the option of the customer to install it or not...charge customers something modest like $25-50 for each lettered version. Split the fee 50/50 between Google and the manufacturer every time a customer elects to pay for the pure Android experience, and the customer still gets warranty and support (if the phone is still within the criteria period).

If the customer chooses to stay with the gunked-up carrier branded ROM, then they go about their phone usage like normal: get the updates that the manufacturer/carrier releases when they want to release them, and suffer the possibility of their phone not getting an update to the latest and greatest lettered ROM in the future.

Hell, if they had done something like this a while ago, then we may very be seeing purchasable 5.0 ROMs out already for wildly popular older but still viable phones, like earlier Galaxy and Note models, to name just a couple.

Yeah, I release that sounds a bit far fetched, but a major draw to the Android ecosystem is the openness and flexibility...so why not exploit that even more while making some extra coin?
 
If the demand is that high that they cant produce enough phones to keep up that would mean they are doing an excellent job selling phones would it not?
 
MrWrong said:
If the demand is that high that they cant produce enough phones to keep up that would mean they are doing an excellent job selling phones would it not?
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Not if they underproduce, fail to penetrate the market effectively, and lose brand loyalty from customers who decide they'll just get something else instead.
 
McFry said:
Not if they underproduce, fail to penetrate the market effectively, and lose brand loyalty from customers who decide they'll just get something else instead.
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Customers are still buying Android phones, they are just buying them from the other manufacturers (Samsung, HTC, etc) ... I am not sure how hard Google wants to push their own version of the phones ... it is tough to be both a supplier and a competitor and one of the reasons that Android is so widely accepted and used is that the companies don't consider Google a direct competitor ... if Google were to try and become an Apple or a Microsoft and aggressively push their own competing hardware product, they might lose a lot of customers and create a market for a software only provider (who doesn't directly threaten the hardware providers)
 
My memory may be bad, but I was always under the assumption that the Nexus devices were primarily created for Android developers. It gave them a baseline so to speak to test their applications on before attempting to port them to carrier specific flavors of Android. I'm assuming Google buys the phones in mass to get it to a lower price for the developers, and guarantee the top names get them, and then release the remainder for consumers and less-popular developers to purchase/fight over.
 
You'd think they had had enough experience at trying to sell them by now.

The Nexus 4 was a logistics fail so was the Nexus 5.

Someone needs to hand in their notice.
 
Well I've played with a Nexus 6 pretty extensively and it's a godphone. It really is. Size takes some getting used to but holy clap. Unfortunately I can't justify buying one when my LG G2 with Lollipop is doing great.

In any case, Google not only being the Android platform owner but also a competitor with hardware partners is obviously a delicate balance. I'm sure they don't want to step on their partners' toes too much. Whether or not that relates to this supply shortage who knows, but I doubt Google wants to be #1 seller of Android phones.
 
The masses are what drive mobile phone sales. Niche devices for the geeks out there, will never sell as well as a device you can walk into any store and buy. Doesn't matter if it's better or not, it just won't sell against mass marketed devices like the Galaxy and iPhones of the world.

Nothing surprising here to be honest.
 
Such a misleading click bait headline. I'm sure Microsoft would love to be as "Terrible" as Google at selling smartphones. :rolleyes:
 
I love my N6! Was just a couple phone calls to find stock at a Bell store in Ontario.
 
This! Many "people" probably don't even know that Google makes phones I bet but they know Apple is a Phone.
derek533 said:
The masses are what drive mobile phone sales. Niche devices for the geeks out there, will never sell as well as a device you can walk into any store and buy. Doesn't matter if it's better or not, it just won't sell against mass marketed devices like the Galaxy and iPhones of the world.

Nothing surprising here to be honest.
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I'm rather shocked people actually want to buy a 6" phone. Thing is useless for putting in your pocket. Even the Note 4 is on the edge of too big.
 
Typing this on my nexus 5... Its a great phone for the money. No complaints here.
 
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