Nexus One Apps

The results so far for the Google Android Nexus One are preliminary in nature, but they are good enough for Google to plan very big things for their new smartphone in the very near future.

Andy Rubin, Google vice president of engineering and the fellow in charge of both Android and the Nexus, talked futures in an interview at CES and it is plain he sees the future as chock full of Android phones. Rubin’s biggest hot button is changing the way consumers purchase phones. He says “This is the next phase of Android–taking the newest versions of the product, placing them online, and allowing consumers to purchase them directly. What we’ve learned is that there are more efficient ways of connecting consumers with the phones they’d like to purchase…easier ways.”

Google aimed the Nexus One at the iPhone and consumers, but that the next Nexus will be aimed at RIM and the Blackberry.  That is really an excellent strategy, although Rubin was not willing to go into detail about Google’s plans for the enterprise. Still, the Nexus One has presented the best challenge yet to the iPhone, and there is nothing to say that Google could not mount a formidable challenge to the Blackberry by starting from scratch with a business-oriented Nexus.

Rubin did admit that Google had to get better at customer service. So far the only support for the new Google phone is via email. There is no number that you can call, which  is strikingly odd for a cell phone company. With wait times for the email support running as much as three days, customer service is one place where Google needs to improve. Rubin agrees. It’s hard to question their chutzpah, though. They are a cell phone company without a customer support telephone number and yet they are aiming themselves at business customers.