A report from Eldar Murtazin says that Google might consider ceasing the Nexus line of smartphones and tablet devices from next year. How good or bad would that be? We’re sure many of you might have used at least one Nexus device till date and for you, this news might be a very bad one because the Nexus devices were doing pretty good always, and there are users who still curse Google for setting the 18-month window period and thus skipping the Android 4.4 KitKat update for the Samsung Galaxy Nexus device.
But if there is going to be a full stop for the Nexus devices, this doesn’t mean Google would stop the activity of selling smartphones through its Play Store, because Google would still keep selling the the pre-existing flagship devices from the various brands as Google Play Edition (GPE) devices, and this could be a choice for users who would like to be going simple with the stock Android ROM, latest OS version and with no bloatware from the OEM.
Just as we write this, there’s another news flashing – Lenovo buys Motorola for $2.91 billion. How good is that for Google? this makes it far clear that Google is looking more into the Android platform but not the handsets.
If what is being claimed by Eldar Murtazin is true in any case, there could be several reasons behind Google taking this step – Either Google wants to make the user’s experience better by providing them the updates, ROM from their own yard while having the best devices with high-end specs from the manufacturers, or the Nexus series didn’t get any real good profits for Google because the pricing that was set by Google could be easily called the least in the competition. According to a few reports, Google took a hit on the hardware to ensure that the customers buy in the ecosystem of the Android OS maker.
But again, if this happens, the customers would be the one taking a hit as this would create a wide gap which was being filled by the Nexus series, because the devices from other manufacturers rarely fall into the budget set by the customers and the Nexus devices were a good choice for them, and a plus to it was that Google never compromised with the specs.
Having said all this, Murtazin has not been accurate all the time whenever he made such statements, so we won’t vouch for him totally, but seeing from Google’s perspective, the move might be a reasonble one for its known reasons. At least the Google Play Edition devices might compromise a little with the pricing, because the smartphones like Samsung Galaxy S4, HTC One which were launched prior to the GPE version launch with huge pricing, and if the idea of only GPE remains in the end, we are sure Google might set the right deals with the smartphone manufacturers to give the users a solution when Nexus is missing from the list.
The Nexus devices that were launched till date by Google, include the following:
- Smartphones: Nexus One (by HTC), Nexus S (by Samsung), Galaxy Nexus (by Samsung), Nexus 4 (by LG), Nexus 5 (by LG)
- Tablets: Nexus 7 first and second gen (by Asus), Nexus 10 (by Samsung)
There is a series of big news in this single week, and this could be leading to a plus for all the companies involved – Google (selling out Motorola, retaining patents and Motorola Ara project), Lenovo (getting Motorola and a better platform to establish in the smartphone market), Samsung which has signed global patent deal with Google for the next ten years and Motorola for not being dumped, rather being picked up by a company which has been trying to grow, and thus would do some good planning for Motorola’s future.
