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07/18/2010
Google has pulled the plug on the Nexus One, its once highly anticipated smartphone. The last shipment has arrived at Google HQ, and once those are gone there will be no more Nexus Ones for U.S. consumers.
The handset will still be sold through Vodafone in Europe and some Asian carriers, and developers will still be able to get their hands on one, but it looks like the Droid phones on Verizon will carry the mantle for Google’s (Google) Android (Android) mobile operating system. This is the end of the company’s grand experiment with an unlocked consumer handset in the U.S.
Following disappointing sales, Google had already closed the Nexus One web store two months ago, so this final nail in the coffin was already overdue.
Google announced the end of the line on its blog (blog) on Friday, but there was so little fanfare or interest in the story in the tech scene that the story slipped through the cracks. Though the device was popular with geeks, most American consumers probably just didn’t understand the concept of an unlocked handset, and Google didn’t put much marketing muscle behind the device.
Thus, it’s no surprise that the phone has been discontinued and hardly anyone noticed. It’s too bad, actually. It was a fine device; it got even finer with the Android 2.2 update a couple of weeks ago.
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