The LG manufactured Nexus smartphone by Google has turned out to be a stunning success, making it difficult for anyone to even manage to get their hands on it, as it happens to be out of stock more often than not. A nice refresher for Google, who put out the Nexus one a few years ago, which turned out to be a total flop.
Apparently, after the major success of this new Nexus, Google is thinking to go brick-and-mortar, and actually open up some retail stores by the end of the year, rumor has it. Will it be a success? Who knows? If Apple can do it, why not Google?
This is just one in many steps from the Search Engine giant to move away from just being “The Search Engine” and moving into a variety of other fields, but so far, all of them have been online, developed by website designers, not construction workers. But, seeing as how the trend for Google seems to be moving more and more into becoming a conglomerate, as opposed to a specialized, “all eggs in one basket” type of company, (as we’ve seen through Google Ventures) it’s no surprise that they’d want to move into the physical world, and start selling their hotcake tablets there. When you have tablets that basically sell themselves, why not cut out the middle man? And that’s exactly what Google intends to do.
This move makes sense, especially in light of the fact that Apple, having retail stores, has actually been able to position things like the iPad so well, which would’ve likely failed if it weren’t for Apple’s physical stores. Tim Cook, who’s the CEO over at Apple, recently said:
“One of the things that’s not understood that well about the stores is that I don’t think we would have been nearly as successful in the iPad as an example if it weren’t for our stores,” said Cook. He noted that people’s view of the tablet, prior to the iPad, “ingrained in their minds [was] a heavy thing that no one wanted.”
Well, perhaps he should’ve held his tongue, because Google seems to be taking him up on it, and it won’t be long now, before you see a Google store selling the Nexus, right next to your local Apple store, selling the iPad.
So what prompted this shift? Likely it was the fact that Google’s online store is doing so well, and since they have money to spend, opening up a few stores, in a few different locations, isn’t a big deal… Worst case scenario, they fail miserably, and Google only lost what they would consider to be a negligible amount of money, so overall, one can assume that this will be a good idea for the tech giant. As for me, I can’t wait to find myself browsing the isles of my local “Google”, how exciting.