'Nexus One was a massive success; we won't be doing it again'.
Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, told The Daily Telegraph that the Nexus One served its purpose of pushing the abilities of the Android operating system, and paving the way for succeeding devices like the HTC Desire.
He insisted it was never meant to grab significant market share in the hardware space.
He said: "The idea a year and a half ago was to do the Nexus One to try to move the phone platform hardware business forward. It clearly did.
It was so successful, we didn't have to do a second one...I called up the board and said: 'Ok, it worked. Congratulations - we're stopping'."
Of course, where the Nexus One failed was in its attempt to kickstart an online sales model for handsets and thus loosen the grip of the operators on the retailing of devices. This was a disaster, with Google accused of mishandling the logistics involved.
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Still, you can't argue with the progress of Android, which is now shipping in around 160,000 new phones a day, equivalent to 4.8m a month.
This seems to be a time of dying handsets. The Nexus news came just days after the Kin was canned and the Else was ditched.
Today also marked the end of the Danger Sidekick, that 'messaging phone' that wowed US users in the mid-noughties. As of July, T-Mobile is pulling the device.
The device was also called the Hiptop, and was launched unsuccessfully in Europe in 2006. Danger was bought by Microsoft in 2008.
