Google Nexus 6: Fans switching loyalty as uncertainty on availability in India persists

Even as Android One had a tepid start, market analysts and retailers say Google is missing a trick by not promoting the pricier Nexus phone more.

By Gulveen Aulakh, ET Bureau | Updated: Dec 08, 2014, 12.27 PM IST

NEW DELHI: This tale from a technology sector CEO illustrates an unusual thing about an iconic global technology giant. Vijay Shekhar Sharma, CEO of Paytm, is a devoted fan of Google’s Nexus smartphone. Sharma is waiting to upgrade to Nexus 6 and has to wait patiently till it’s available online on Flipkart, which is the only Indian outlet, online or offline, for the phone.

The Paytm CEO’s frustrating experience is shared by many, many Nexus smartphone fans. Google, as formidable a marketing machine as any globally, has put its weight behind low-cost Android One phones in India, spending Rs 100 crore in the project. Nexus, on the other hand, is not marketed by Google and is rarely marketed by its hardware partners LG, Motorola and HTC either.

Even as Android One had a tepid start, market analysts and retailers say Google is missing a trick by not promoting the pricier Nexus phone more. “Instead of focusing on Android One, it would be a good call for Google to sell Nexus offline as it is a flagship product that has a good pull,” says Satish Babu, founder of Chennai-based retail store chain UniverCell Mobiles, one of several large format chains willing to stock Nexus 6. “There are takers for Nexus even at the high price,” Babu said.

Nexus Fans Switching Loyalty

He compared this with cheaper Android One phones, which have had a not-so-impressive run since their launch a few weeks back. Other mobile brick and mortar retailers — for example, Himangshu Chakravarti of MobileStore — agree with UniverCell Mobiles’ Babu. They say there’s a lot of latent demand for the high performing Nexus phone but supply is a problem, and Google can tap that by selling offline. Some Nexus fans are switching loyalty, not wanting to wait long for an upgrade to arrive.

Paytm CEO Sharma says Xiaomi is one of the favourite options of those abandoning Nexus. “I’ve been waiting for it for some time now, but many Nexus 5 users waiting to upgrade to Nexus 6 have moved to Xiaomi’s Mi 3 which offers almost the same specifications at roughly half the cost,” Sharma says. Xiaomi’s Mi 3 was launched in July atRs 14,999.

Nexus phones are in the Rs 20,000 toRs 30,000 price band. The LG-made 4.95 inch Nexus 5 was launched in November last year, the fifth successor to Nexus 1 introduced in 2010. Nexus 5 is priced between Rs 22,000 andRs 33,000 on e-commerce sites. Nexus 6, powered by Google’s Android Lollipop operating system, has been made by Motorola.

Nexus 6 was listed for pre-orders in the US late in October and all variants were reported to be sold out within a few hours. The story was the same in the UK. In India, initial stocks were pre-booked within a day or two. When asked by ET, Flipkart did not share the number of pre-orders. Nexus 6 may be available in Google’s 3-day online sale beginning December 10. Hong Kong-based research firm Counterpoint Technologies estimates that around 2,00,000 Nexus 5 phones were shipped to India this year.

Compare that with the 1.6-1.8 million Android-based smartphones that were sold in India this year in the sameRs 20,000-Rs 30,000 price band. Clearly, say analysts and retail traders, Google can sell far more Nexus phones than it is selling now – if it wants to. On the other hand, in just two and a half months since mid-September, a little under 500,000 Android One phones have been shipped to India, more than double the year-long total for Nexus 5 phones. But despite this, Android One hasn’t quite taken off.

In all 7 million smartphones in the Rs 6,000-Rs 8,000 price band, the range in which Android One phones are available, were sold in four months till October. With less than a half a million shipments, Google’s low-cost smartphone was obviously a slow seller in this category. That Nexus is a story of untapped potential in India is also clear from the fact that India accounts for just 3,00,000 of the 9.9 million Nexus phones sold globally since 2010, according to data from Counterpoint Technologies.

Android, both technology and mobile retail experts say, is a hugely popular operating system in India and Google’s Nexus phones are ideally situated to exploit that popularity. Nexus, experts say, is the benchmark setting Android-based smartphone. JUST A SHOWPIECE? Google responded to ET’s query on undermarketing Nexus by saying: “We always introduce Nexus devices alongside our platform releases (such as Lollipop), as advances in computing are always driven at the intersection of hardware and software.”

Other explanations from analysts and experts were more detailed. Google works with hardware partners to build Nexus devices, and the idea is to help push boundaries of what's possible, say analysts tracking the sector. Nexus serves as a reference for the Android ecosystem. “Ideally, it would have been a good business case had Google entered into devices,” said a Bangalore-based analyst who did not want to be named. He added that Google perhaps wants Nexus to simply serve as a reference point, a showcase for the power of hardware.

Counterpoint’s telecom analyst Tarun Pathak says Google may not want to scale up Nexus distribution to “avoid stepping into its manufacturing partners’ toes” and that Nexus phones “may be mostly a showcase that’s meant for developers first and then consumers”.

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Google Nexus 6 smartphone: 7 features

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Text: Agencies

Google has come out with bigger, more expensive version of its Nexus phone to attract more of the affluent consumers who faithfully buy each new generation of Apple's iPhone.

We take a look at seven salient facts about Google's new smartphone: