Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) rocked Web advertising and search. They still do. It pulled its self up on the World Wide Web by its elbows, and ever since has remained king of the mountain. They even had Bill Gates scratching his head, searching for the key to ‘search’. Well now the question on the minds of many, after the release of the Nexus One smart-phone, is can Google rock the burgeoning mobile market with the same level of mastery?
Can they push Apple off of the mountain?

The Nexus One makes the choice of what carrier to use, secondary.
It cannot be tried out in stores. It is only available online, and the unlocked version ($529) is only slightly less expensive than unlocked versions of iPhones, Palm (Nasdaq: PALM) Pre’s and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droids.

According to 451 Group Research Director Chris Hazelton:

“It’s not a device that’s really notably different than any other Android device…They say that they tried to build an experience online where you could ‘touch’ the phone. They even have a section where you could measure your hand and then it shows you how the device fits in your hand. That’s kind of reaching. They’re not really useful tools in addressing your concern, which is, ‘I want to touch the phone.’”

IDC analyst Al Hilwa thinks that Google’s Android operating system will none the less, come out successful in their new frontier, giving the iPhone a run for its money:

“Google has always had an approach towards the carrier business where they’ve had to hold their nose and work with them in order to bring Android to market…They’ve done a great job with that, by the way. But with the online store and unlocking the phones, it’s kind of a shift of the center of power away from the carriers. That’s what Google is trying to do.”

He continued, speaking about the retail dynamics for smart phones:

“As the hardware gets cheaper, people will be quite willing to put a couple of hundred dollars into a phone. By then the carriers will be giving these free with contracts. If you zoom two years into the future, the price keeps going down, Moore’s Law keeps going inexorably, and you’ll see [unlocked] phones in the $200 range and free with a carrier contract. That’s the future play, and this is Google’s opening bid in this space. It may be the thing that nudges unlocked phones into mainstream usage. That’s coming for carriers. It’s going to start taking off as the market is propped up by media consumption rather than telephony…”