The biggest problem with selling the Nexus One direct was support. Carriers didn't want to support a phone that hadn't branded and Google couldn't accept that people don't want to ask a community message board and wait a few days for a reply when their phone doesn't work.
Microsoft announced, then released, spent $250M on advertising, and then killed a new phone in that time.
To be fair, Google did the same thing in the same time frame with the Nexus One, minus the ad budget.
Sometimes disrupting existing markets and paradigms takes time, patience, and several iterations.
(I'm still disappointed at how quickly they stopped the direct-sale idea with the Nexus One)
The biggest problem with selling the Nexus One direct was support. Carriers didn't want to support a phone that hadn't branded and Google couldn't accept that people don't want to ask a community message board and wait a few days for a reply when their phone doesn't work.
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Microsoft made $250M profit yesterday.
While that sounds great, according to http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(+microsoft+profit+)+/+... it's actually 51 million/day. So it took them a full week to make the 250 million. Or was yesterday special?
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It was announced in May 2009. It wasn't publicly released until three months ago (http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20005394-264.html).
It had an invite system like Gmail, millions of users were in before it was "public". I signed up in November 2009 (and last logged in then too).
Given the "this is the future of communication" fanfare, I think some of us expected it to be a long term play.
The public beta was only made available in May or June this year (as I recall).