Nexus - Google plays Microsoft to Apple's Apple

We have to do this stuff, you understand, but we'll keep it brief.

The long awaited Google Nexus is launched, among hooha, fanfare and all that. But, on the other hand, it looks like an iPhone, quacks like an iPhone....I think the NYT's David Pogue sums it up best - after pointing out the plusses (looks like an iPhone, does a few easily copied things) and minuses (doesn't do some things an iPhone does, but no doubt will in time...) he notes that:

The idea of the Google phone store is pure, giddy idealism: You’ll buy the phone you want, then you’ll shop for the cell plan you want, from the carrier you want. No more “You want an iPhone? Then you get AT&T.”

Well, it’s about time! Rise up in the streets! Power to the people! Truth shall triumph!

Or not.

I mean, it’s a great idea and all. It’s just that, well, apart from the iPhone, who really cares which carrier has a certain phone? In the list of complaints about American cellphone carriers sent to me by readers, that one is waaaaaay down the list.

.....

The Nexus One is an excellent app phone, fast and powerful but marred by some glitches and missing features — a worthy competitor to the Droid, if not the iPhone. The Google phone store is a neat, centralized place to buy phones, but so far, it offers zero advantages over buying a T-Mobile phone any other way.

We have been wondering, since the iPhone came out who will play Microsoft to Apple's Apple (to us the smartphone is just another 1980's PC type marketplace). Apple's typical game is to enter a market underserved by its incumbents with a beautiful, integrated but closed system. Think PC, think iPod, think iPhone. It then typically carves out 10 - 20% of the highest margin customers leaving les autres to battle for the volume market.

As with the PC/UNIX environment, where the original CP/M and BUNCH incumbents did not measure up to the Apple challenge and IBM/Microsoft entered, here we have Google/Android coming in. This then is the set of this next decade's phase of the Mobile/Smartphone (aka mini-netbook) market.

Only thing is, Apple's already disrupting the e-Reader/Tablet market, Mobile is already done and dusted.