Nexus D’oh! II
It looks like my concern that the Google Nexus One would supplant the Motorola Droid as the top Android phone was unfounded (in sales at least). According to an article on Gizmodo, the Nexus One only sold 20,000 units during the first week of sales and 80,000 in the first month. Compare those numbers to the Droid: 250,000 in the first week and 525,000 in the first month of sales! Only the original iPhone beats the Droid at 350,000 and 600,000.
I guess the lesson learned here is: you have to advertise your products! Apple and Motorola/Verizon inundated television with commercials for their phones. Google’s marketing plan so far is to have text and image ads all over the web via Google AdWords/AdSense. Combine the lack of television advertising with the fact that you can only purchase the Nexus One through Google.com, and you have a recipe for disaster. You can go to any Apple or AT&T store and hold an iPhone in your hands, or you can visit the Verizon store for a demo of the Droid. Being able to actually use an expensive product before purchase means a lot. Not to mention that stores and salespeople have a vested interest in making you buy their phone. When Verizon or AT&T gets you in their store, they can do the hard sell, and they can up-sell you service plans and accessories. When you go to google.com/phone, you will see an awesome demo of the Nexus One, but all you have to do is close your browser when you've had enough.
Selling consumer electronics is not like launching Google Maps. The Nexus One can’t be in ‘beta’ for 3 years. If Google search goes down, so what? Users will switch over to Yahoo! or Bing. If a user’s Nexus One locks up, they are going to want immediate customer service. When you shell out a couple hundred bucks for a phone and it doesn’t work, you’re not going to be too pleased with searching a support forum for answers.
Unless Google finds a partner to help them sell and service the Nexus One (T-Mobile is the Nexus One network, but they don’t provide customer sales or support), the Motorola Droid will continue to be the Android top dog (until the next big think comes along in about 10 minutes ).
Shhh! Cool Tech…
Sony Vaio L-Series
Microsoft is making a big mistake. They have a great deal of amazing technology, but they are keeping it all a secret from the public. It's not just Microsoft. Many tech companies are failing to market their products effectively. It's not that they don't advertise, but they don't produce the right type of advertising, and in some cases, not enough.
Last week, two friends and I took a trip to the mall for lunch. After a quick bite at the food court, we strolled the mall and hit the usual spots. We stopped in the Apple store, browsed the over-priced gadget stores, and popped our heads into SonyStyle. Among the huge and brilliant LCDs sat an all-in-one Sony Vaio desktop computer, similar in function to an iMac but with a industrial look.
The Sony Vaio L-Series computer is an all-in-one desktop computer with a multi-touch touchscreen display and Windows 7. Prices range from $1200 to $2000, but the one we played with had these specs:
- 24 inch HD touchscreen monitor
- Quad-core processor
- 6 GBs of RAM
- Wireless Keyboard & Mouse
- 1/2 TB Hard drive
- BluRay
- Windows 7 64-bit
- TV Tuner with Remote
Adverts Dilemma
One of my biggest pet peeves is animated advertisements on the web. I'm talking about Flash ads that you can find on almost any popular website. The less annoying ones animate some text or logo upon load and then stop moving. More annoying are the ads that continue to animate as long as the web page is displayed. The most annoying animated ads have rapid movement or flashing animations.
Advertising pays the bills, and I have little problem with it as long as the reader understands that the website has sponsors, and their sponsors can apply editorial pressure on the content. The same can be said of BackingIn.com.
