It's a flop in the world where a newcomer introduces a new phone with proprietary hardware and software, on a single carrier, at an insane price point, and sells hundreds of thousands of them in the first week. We live in that world now.
Edit: Remember MotoROKR? How many millions did they sell? Exactly!
I understand that Google's hardware background isn't the same as Apple's. My point is that mobile hardware was just as new to both companies when they entered the space. Apple simply executed better than Google did.
Sorry. But you have absolutely zero idea what you are talking about.
You want to talk about Apple's mobile hardware experience before iphone? What was macbook? What were those 3/4 generations of ipods before iphone was released? Do you consider an ipod a mobile device? Do you consider a macbook mobile device? How can you say Apple was newcomer to consumer mobile device before iphone release?
First ipod was released in 2001, first iphone was released in 2007. They had ~6 years of experience of selling and manufacturing mobile devices before they released a consumer phone.
What "consumer mobile device" did Google sell before Nexus One?
Comparing Datacenters to consumer mobile device is so weak, I am not going to even bother.
Google's ability to reach into so many distinct markets is pretty remarkable to me. I think we can't ignore the mountains of data they have on consumer buying patterns though. They've probably collected more business intelligence than any other company prior. That's quite the competitive advantage to be allowed.
Where exactly did Google spend all this money? I see DRIOD and iPhone commercials nightly and have yet to see Nexus One commercial. I also don't see any Nexus One advertising in stores or anywhere else a typical consumer might go looking for a phone.
Google did some web advertising and had some business news sites cover the phone because well they are Google. I have yet to see any sort of advertising from them that even comes close to the iPhone or DROID (which incidentally has also done very well).
I don't know in which world is selling a new phone of 135k units by a newcomer in the hardware/phone industry is considered a flop.
Nexus One is Google first shot at a phone on an already heavily competitive industry. Without having any experience is selling/producing a consumer product like this, I would say this is a pretty good result for a first time. Come back after 1 year and another iteration of the phone and than we can talk about numbers and perhaps decide whether its a flop or a success.
For now, the way I look at it, its an experiment in progress.
I don't even own an andriod phone. I am still happy with my iphone. But when my contract expires I most likely will consider an android phone.
USA is a matured and very competitive cell phone market, its not very easy to get existing phone users who are committed to their phone contracts. Getting a new phone is a fairly long term commitment for most users.