It looks like sales of the T-Mobile G1 phone are going well. T-Mobile has had to increase production of the handsets to keep up with the pre-sale demand. The phone won’t be available until October 22nd but it seems that people can’t wait to get their orders in.
T-Mobile have predicted that they will sell 500,000 handsets by the end of 2008 and there are other predictions from HTC that they will have sold 2 million by the end of 2009.
These numbers are always going to be compared with the astonishing sales rate the iPhone sold at when it was first released. The iPhone 3G sold 1 million handsets in July 2008. No-one expects anything like that from the G1 phone, but there has been a lot of hype and it will sell well.
I think that word of mouth and usability will really help the G1 phone’s sales take off. If the first people to buy it really like it, they will spread the word. If others see it looks good and start hearing a lot about it there will be a ripple effect that is sometimes seen when a new exciting product is released.
Apple has been very successful at targeting the main stream mobile user market for the iPhone. At the moment I’m sure that the G1 phone doesn’t have the reach to target a mass market. People who buy the G1 phone now will have done their research, they may have been waiting a long time for the release and they probably know a fair amount about mobile technology. They might even be reading this!
The iPhone reached into the consciousness of a lot of people. Word spread that it was the new phone to have. I can’t help thinking though that Google are also experts at this. Think how the Google search engine became the search engine mainly through non-traditional marketing. People started talking about it and Google became synonymous with search. Google will be hoping something similar can happen with Android. They want Android to become synonymous with the mobile internet.
I’m not predicting that this will happen with Android. The kind of success Google has already seen is almost a one off. But I do think that in time Android will become dominant in the mobile market and Google will have carved itself out another leading position in terms of market share.
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