Wednesday, January 06, 2010

The Real Nexus One Challenge

Isn't what most people make it out to be. Many insist on comparing it to the iPhone which misses a salient issue.

The Network.

The thing is the iPhone is locked into ATt&T so there's no direct competition between the two phones. The heart of the issue is the network reliability the devices work on.

The iPhone was a revolution in it's time but by tying itself to a single carrier it tied it's user base to that carriers ability to provide service where and when the user needs it. Customer surveys repeatedly show that while they love their iPhone they are much less pleased with AT&T when it comes to area coverage and reliability.

A recent survey has Verizon ranked number one T-Mobile below that and AT&T dead last in terms of customer satisfaction. No amount of advertising singing their own praises will change the fact that AT&T needs to improve their network*.

Along comes HTC offering Android OS based smart phones to T-Mobile and then Verizon.
Suddenly people who had been interested in the iPhone but stayed away due to the carrier they'd have to go with here in the U.S. had a reason to get excited. Maybe the initial offering weren't as slick as the iPhone but they beat most of the other choices available on those carriers at the time.

Enter the Nexus One. It's sleek, the hardware is a step up from almost any smart phone around now and Google has polished the interface a bit. Still not quite an iPhone when it comes to user interaction but. it's not locked into AT&T. Initially it's going to be supported by T-Mobile and then in the spring available to Verizon customers, (at least that's Google's plan).

So, the phones it will directly compete with are.. other HTC phones and Rim's Blackberry phones.

I believe that no one familiar with AT&T's actual network coverage will buy an iPhone if both T-Mobile and Verizon have near equivalent phones available at a decent rate for data/talk time.

When you come down to it.. up until recently the only real other choice for a smart phone was the Blackberry but Droid launched last month and then the Droid Eris was released soon after for people that didn't want to spend over $100.00.  Suddenly there's a strong surge of interest in Android based phones.

That puts the ball in AT&T's and to a degree Apple's court if they want to maintain market share in the smart phone realm.

Now, if Verizon would come up with a family plan that could add an 'affordable' data plan come spring I'd likely buy a Nexus One, (if it's not over 200.00 for the phone itself). Especially if Google/HTC tweaks the few issues tech reviewers have noted. (I'm not crazy about the nickel and diming that Verizon does with their 'additional features'.)

*  As an ex AT&T customer and current Verizon customer and I can speak to the issue of dropped calls and areas where coverage just vanishes. In my current home town AT&T would at best register three bars usually at home it was two bars, and if you moved just a foot in either direction you could lose a call. On the other hand the only time I've lost a call on Verizon was when I ran out of 'juice' in the phone's battery.