Droid Milestone Sold More In First 74 Days Than iPhone, Nexus One Selling Poorly [Analytics Company Estimates That Motorola Droid Milestone Outsold The iPhone Early On, Nexus One Is Way Off - Is It A Failure?]

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Mobile phone analytics company Flurry did an estimate on the sales of the Motorola Droid (known as the Milestone outside the US), Apple iPhone and the Google/HTC Nexus, through Day 74 of their general release. What they found might surprise you – while the iPhone is probably the mindshare learder in the smartphone market – the Droid barely outsold it. And the Google Nexus One – regarded by many pundits as the “purest” Android phone has sold poorly.

The Motorola Droid barely edged out the iPhone in sales through the first 74 days, with the Droid capturing just 50,000 more units sold. While this is remarkable, it’s important to remember that the first generation iPhone wasn’t subsidized, while the Droid was. The Nexus One has only sold a miserable 135,000 units in its first 74 days. This wasn’t an entire surprise, as sources within Google and HTC have said things accordingly.

Why is the Nexus One doing so poorly despite being regarded as the “best” and “purest” Android experience? In our estimation, it boils down to price and fanfare:

Price: Google is asking $529 for the Nexus One unsubsidized. North Americans are used to paying for phones subsidized with a service plan – and in the first few weeks of the Nexus One’s launch, T-Mobile customers had to open a new service plan to get the Nexus One. Now, existing customers can upgrade to the Nexus One, but it wasn’t always like that.

Fanfare: Like anything Apple does post-2003, the iPhone was launched to great fanfare. We had weeks of speculations, tons of bad Photoshop renders of potential iPhones and when Steve Jobs finally revealed the device, it was watched like the World Cup of the tech blog world. After all that excitement, it’s hard not to believe that the iPhone flew off of shelves. As for the droid, Motorola and Verizon had (and currently have) a huge marketing campaign in the US promoting the Droid. There have been a few Nexus One c

Is the Nexus One a failure? Several high-profile tech blogs have said so – considering that it isn’t selling well. I’m not so sure, considering that Google wanted the Nexus One to be an “unfragmented” Android experience. They delivered on that, and HTC provided some great hardware. Google won’t go out of business because of the poor Nexus One sales, and it gave them an experience in producing hardware – which they’ll need for their upcoming Google netbooks later this year.