Google discovers that phones are hard-ware

From Good Morning Silicon Valley:

This morning, analytics outfit Flurry, which gets a good handle on handset use through app stats, delivered its estimate of Nexus One sales in the phone’s first 74 days, and the news was not good. The 74-day milestone was used because that’s how long it took the first model of Apple’s iPhone to sell one million units. Flurry’s calculation of Nexus One sales over a similar stretch — 135,000 units. The sorry showing has nothing to do with overall enthusiasm for Google’s Android mobile OS; in its first 74 days, Motorola’s Droid sales hit 1.05 million units, a tad better than the original iPhone. Because of assorted market variables, the numbers aren’t directly comparable, but they do provide a general sense of things. And what the numbers would seem to be telling Google is that without the marketing muscle and consumer convenience that come with selling a phone through a major carrier, even a technically impressive piece of hardware is going to have a rough go of it. Google will have to hope things turn around once the Nexus One becomes available on the Verizon network this spring.

And, to add insult to injury, Google’s discovered that its application to trademark ‘Nexus’ has been rejected. Someone else got there first. Google will appeal. Lots of lucrative work for m’learned friends ahead.