Actually it's 100% backwards...

I gave a number of reasons the N1 failed other than price, ferinstance Apple's marketing and support was impeccable and Google's was nonexistent. I forgot to mention that Apple's appstore was easy to use and worked great while Google's Market didn't work at all in many (most?) foreign countries and had very unclear charging and return policies.

People are happy to buy phones from non-carriers, but they need to (a) know about them, (b) feel confident that they will work, and (c) if not, they can easily return them. This was certainly not the case with the N1. And that's 100% Google's fault.