The best thing about this Nexus launch is that people were actually able to buy the phones
Google has been selling Nexus phones for over five years now. The original goal of the Nexus program was to skip carriers altogether and allow customers to buy directly from Google. That plan had a lot of bumps along the way. Carriers were not always cooperative, but the biggest hurdle for Google has always been themselves.
The Nexus 6 was in and out of stock for nearly a month after release. The Nexus 5 was delayed for several weeks. The Nexus 4 was also hard to find in stock. With nearly every Nexus launch there have been delays, backorders, crashing stores, and simply not enough stock. It has always been a mess, to the point where some people were preemptively ready for another disaster.
This year it was different.
At the time of this article, which is close to 24 hours after the new phones went up for sale, it is still possible to pre-order the Nexus 6P and 5X from the Google Store. They are still listed as shipping in “3-4 weeks,” which is exactly what Google said at the event.
Google’s biggest success wasn’t the Nexus 5X hitting a super low price point. It wasn’t the much-improved camera performance. And it wasn’t making people care about a Huawei phone. The best thing Google has done with this Nexus launch is actually letting people purchase the phones. Sounds simple, right? History would tell us otherwise.
Taking pre-orders is just one battle. To win the war, you have to take pre-orders and fulfill them in the promised time frame. Google has managed to successfully take pre-orders without going out of stock, but now they have to keep their shipping promise. Pre-orders are scheduled to ship out at the end of October/early November. Let’s see if Google can keep it that way.
How many of you were able to pre-order the new Nexus phones? Did you find this year’s buying experience to be much easier than previous years?