Introduced yesterday, the much awaited Google phone, known as Nexus One is now available directly from the search giant’s site. It’s $179 with a two-year data plan from T-Mobile or $529 unlocked.
According to The New York Times, Google is “dipping its toes in the direct retailing business not to reap profits from the sale of phones but to broaden the availability of handsets running its Android software.”
“There is an opportunity to make some margin on the unit sales, but that’s not the objective here,” Andy Rubin, a vice president of engineering in charge of the Android technology, said during a press conference at Google’s headquarters here. “Our primary business is advertising.”
Tim O’Reilly likes the phone and the developments it portends.
We’re moving from the era in which the device is primary and the web is an add-on, to the era in which a device and its applications are fundamentally dependent on the internet operating system that provides location, speech recognition, image recognition, social network awareness, and other fundamental data services.
In a little more than a year the Android mobile operating system has grown from one device on one carrier to 20 devices with 59 carriers around the world.
