SAN FRANCISCO—No one knows quite what to make of Google's Android-powered Nexus Q media hub here at Google I/O. The cloud-connected ball's obvious competition is Apple TV, as PCMag consumer electronics analyst explained earlier on Thursday, but there are other comparisons with past and present devices on the market as well.
For starters, there's Google's own Google TV Smart TV platform, which runs set-top boxes like Vizio's new $99 Co-Star Stream Player. Does the Nexus Q cannibalize Google TV sales and vice-versa? The Nexus Q is tied directly to Google Play and is being billed as more of a social music player for the living room than anything else, whereas Google TV is about accessing television and movie content from the likes of Netlix and HBO via Google's Chrome browser.
So the two platforms do different things, but it feels like those different things ought to be done on just one device. Would you really want a Nexus Q and Google TV? You'd probably watch most of your TV and movies on the second device, except that you'd maybe look at YouTube videos and your cloud-stored media content on the first one.
That sounds like having two silverware drawers—one where you keep most of the forks and a couple of spoons and another that's got all of the knives, most of the spoons, and one odd fork that you keep there for no apparent reason. What's the point?
Where the Nexus Q is really raising eyebrows is with its price tag. When Google announced the device, Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst for Moor Insights & Strategy, had this to say:
"At the current price and capability, Google's Nexus Q device will not sell well. It lacks certain streaming capabilities of Apple TV and even Google TV, yet at $299 is priced three times above them. Sonos already has a loyal following, solid brand, and supports both Android and iOS. The Q lacks iOS support, so your friends would have to have Android phones to participate in the social music fun."
Moorhead also puzzled over what's inside the Nexus Q. Google's charging fairly big bucks for not a whole lot of hardware and that's a road the company has been down before with its Chromebooks. The jury's still out on Chromebooks, but they certainly haven't lived up to the hype in their first year on the market.
Wired has already done a teardown of the TI OMAP 4460-anchored Nexus Q—flipping through it doesn't reveal anything that hints at a bill of materials that remotely approaches the sticker price.
Then there's the fact that the Nexus Q is a brick unless you have an Android smartphone or tablet to direct it. And right now, it only works with devices running Google's new Android 4.1 Jelly Bean operating system, which means you need the Nexus 7 tablet—the only available Jelly Bean device there is right now—or there's no point to have the Nexus Q.
There will be more Jelly Bean products available in the coming months, of course, and Google says it the Nexus Q will eventually work with devices running older versions of Android, but still.
From a historical perspective, there's a couple of other products with which to compare the Nexus Q, both of them also made by a software company that got dragged more or less kicking and screaming into the hardware business.
We're talking about Microsoft's Xbox and Zune. They represent the opposite ends of possibility when a company that doesn't really develop its own hardware products finally takes a stab at it.
The Xbox has been a roaring success (and Microsoft's next-gen console will likely take on media hubs like Google TV and Apple TV, implement augmented reality, further develop the Kinect motion sensor, while remaining the top gaming platform in the world).
The Zune? Microsoft's portable music player finally gave up the ghost last October.
So is the Nexus Q more likely to be an Xbox or a Zune? Here's a hint: Google's new device has an "x" in its name, but that's not the one we're thinking of.
For more, see PCMag's Hands On With Google's Nexus Q. Also check out Google Nexus 7 vs. Amazon Kindle Fire: Small-Screen Tablet Showdown.
For more from Damon, follow him on Twitter @dpoeter.
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