The smartphone wars: Google changes aim
<p>I just got a look at the <a href="http://www.google.com/nexus/">promotional video for the Nexus S</a>.  What it reveals about Google&#8217;s Android strategy is fascinating, and suggests that the pressure on Apple and the telcos is about to ratchet up another notch. </p>
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<p>The Nexus S, for those of you who haven&#8217;t been paying attention, is the successor to the  Nexus One, the original Googlephone. Similar looks, identical price point ($529 from Google, $199 with T-mobile contract).  HDSPA radio capability, which means it can use T-Mobile&#8217;s 3.5G network.  Android 2.3 &#8220;Gingerbread&#8221;. <a href="http://www.google.com/phone/detail/nexus-s">Spec sheet here.</a> This would have been the Nexus Two if Google CEO Eric Schmidt hadn&#8217;t for some now-forgotten reason  promised there&#8217;d be no Nexus Two.</p>
<p>HTC is on the sidelines &#8211; this is a Samsung handset.  And it has the NFC (near-field capablility) that Schmidt recently highlighted as a key feature for next-generation phones.  He&#8217;s basically said up front that Google aims to replace conventional credit cards and the credit-card companies are OK with this.  Hey, if it talks to their payment systems they don&#8217;t care.  Not having to ship and manage as many physical cards will lower their costs.</p>
<p>The video tells us some very interesting things about how Google is positioning the Nexus S.  And, because Google isn&#8217;t stupid and doubtless test-marketed and focus-grouped the product pretty carefully, that in turn tells us a lot about what Google thinks the state of the smartphone market is and where the battlegrounds of the next phase of the smartphone wars will be.</p>
<p>First message: Google thinks that this time it&#8217;s got an iPhone killer that can capture the youth/hipster/trendoid market. The video is aimed squarely at teenagers and fashion victims just as surely as the Nexus One was positioned as cutting-edge techno-cool for geeks and salarymen.</p>
<p>Second message: This thing is being marketed squarely as an organize-your-world information appliance.  I&#8217;m not certain I ever saw an actual phone call occur in the video, and if there was one it went by so fast that I missed at.  No, the focus was actually on augmented-reality apps &#8211; using the phone display as an information overlay on your physical environment.</p>
<p>Third message, and the stinger in the tail:  Near the end, the video says &#8220;Pure Google&#8221;.  Yes, this does seems to mean that Google has read consumer disgust with carrier skinning and lockdown and decided to actively market the uncompromised Android experience against the carriers.</p>
<p>On the assumption that Google&#8217;s market-intelligence people haven&#8217;t been taking stupid pills, this sets up a prediction: Apple and the cell carriers are about to take a hard punch in the face.</p>
<p>If this seems overly optimistic, reflect on the way that Android phones have so far been winning every market Google has chosen to throw them at. <em>All</em> other smartphone OSes have been losing relative market share. Carrier efforts to capture, cripple, and own-brand  Android have already, as I&#8217;ve noted in my reports on the G-2, stumbled badly.</p>
<p>The most interesting second-order implication of &#8220;Pure Google&#8221; is that Google now thinks it can say a loud public fuck-you to the telco carriers  and get away with it.  Big change from July when the Nexus One got pulled from the Google store, a move many observers (but not me) took to mean Google had lost the power struggle with the carriers.  I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s much doubt who has the whip hand now.</p>
<p>And as for Apple&#8230;their strategic problem just got dicier.  The N1 wasn&#8217;t designed to go head-to-head with the iPhone on &#8220;user experience&#8221; and wasn&#8217;t marketed that way either. The Nexus S, from this video, squarely is. Apple fanboys may be too worshipful to think this is a real danger, but I think Apple&#8217;s planners know better.  Watch for an increasing marketing emphasis on their tablets and media/entertainment delivery as a leading indicator that they&#8217;re conceding defeat in phone handsets.</p>
