The end of the road for the Nexus One

The Nexus One, of course, is an Android device. It is a quite nice handset, really, but the world is increasingly gifted with a wide choice of nice Android handsets. What sets the Nexus One apart is its relative openness; it need not be jailbroken, the bulk of its necessary software is free, and there is a variety of alternative Android builds to run on it. No other current-generation Android handset is so open, with the near-exception of the Motorola Droid - but Motorola has made it clear that the Droid's successors will not be so easy to work with. When the Nexus One is gone, if and until something else replaces it, the Android world will be more closed than it was before.

It is worth noting that the Nexus One is not going away entirely; it will be available alongside the ADP2 handset for developers set up as publishers in the Android market. But it will no longer be available as a mainstream consumer item.

The Nexus One has been widely portrayed as a commercial failure - and perhaps it is. It is an expensive device - on the face of it, rather more so than a shiny new iPhone 4, and it doesn't even come with a free case. The headline version only works well with the smallest carrier in the US, though an AT&T-capable version was eventually released as well. No US carriers sell it to their customers directly (your editor did just stumble across one for a mere €500 in a European Vodafone store). Promotion of the Nexus One was minimal and, seemingly, limited to Google's advertising network. Prospective customers have also figured out that, despite its towering strengths elsewhere, Google really just doesn't quite get the concept of customer support.

So the odds were rather stacked against this device from the beginning. One could hope that the prospect of an open device would be enough to motivate people to overcome the obstacles listed above and get a device like a Nexus One anyway. But the truth of the matter is that, at this point, openness at that level is not much use to most handset users. Your editor will confess that he still feels a certain childlike joy at the prospect of reflashing an expensive device that he depends on, possibly bricking it, then painfully restoring all of the settings and discovering all of the new bugs which have been added. It's the sort of adrenaline experience that others, perhaps, seek through horror movies, bungee jumping, investing in equities, or PHP programming. There is no accounting for taste, it seems. Not that many customers have a taste for the Nexus One experience, especially when even relatively locked-down Android handsets seem more open than many of the alternatives.

[PULL QUOTE: The pessimistic among us can be forgiven for concluding that the battle for open handsets is being lost. END QUOTE] The pessimistic among us can be forgiven for concluding that the battle for open handsets is being lost. The carriers determine which devices will be successful in the market, and they have absolutely no interest in openness. Customers are irresistibly drawn to heavily advertised, shiny devices with low up-front costs; they just do not see any reason to insist on more open devices or, even, freedom from carrier lock-in. Attempts to create a market in open handsets - Nexus One, OpenMoko - seem to go down in flames. By this reasoning, we may well all be using Linux-based handsets in the future, but the freedom that attracted many of us to Linux will have been lost.

By now, some readers are certainly protesting that this discussion ignores another mostly-open device: Nokia's N900. It's not clear that the N900 has been a commercial success either; your editor has yet to see one outside of a Linux-oriented conference. Still, the N900 might just point toward an interesting, less pessimistic future.

The MeeGo system remains a bit of a dark horse; it's arriving late to a well-established party. But MeeGo has some interesting attributes, including a real attempt to create an open, community-oriented culture and the backing of a pair of large companies with significant stakes in the outcome. Nokia and Intel are both watching the smartphone market happen without them; Nokia, in particular, very much needs to find a way back into the game. MeeGo appears to be part of the plan for that reentry, so considerable resources are being put into its development. As a result, MeeGo is quickly developing into something interesting.

If MeeGo handsets make their debut as "Android without all those annoying free Google services," they may find an unenthusiastic reception. But, just maybe, MeeGo can come in offering a better, more interesting experience which includes a higher level of openness. The N900 has already attracted a significant development community, one which is more tightly tied into the free software community as a whole. MeeGo, in a sufficiently open setting, might be able to engage the wider community in a way that Android has not, yet, succeeded in doing. If MeeGo takes off, some surprising things might just happen.

From the July, 2010 perspective, that all looks like a tall order. It depends on the availability of open handsets (which are currently nowhere in sight), solid software releases, a continued opening of the MeeGo project to the community, and a sufficient level of commercial success to keep the whole thing going. The odds seem daunting, but it's worth remembering that, not all that long ago, Android, too, was dismissed as a too-little-too-late offering in a crowded and maturing marketplace. There is also a wild card out there in the form of Palm's WebOS, now under HP's management. It may yet come to pass that, in the near future, the handset market will be dominated by competing, Linux-based devices where the strength of the development community - driven by the openness of the platform - is a key factor.