Google announced today that it is bringing back its straight-to-consumer sales channel for the Galaxy Nexus. The first Nexus, the Nexus One, was sold for $529 directly to consumers, and was available in both an AWS and UMTS model.
The Galaxy Nexus, which is being sold under the new SKU ‘takju’ (as opposed to ‘yakju’ and ‘yakjux’), will retail for an incredibly low $399, undercutting many of the top-of-the-line Android devices available in the United States.
Andy Rubin, in a post written on Google’s Mobile Blog today, said that they hope to be able to bring it to other countries soon. Canada would be an interesting place, though, since it is already sold for between $599 and $649 outright on most Canadian carriers. Making it available for $399, or even $449, would be a huge blow to the existing inventory kept by the carriers, who likely purchased the devices at near retail prices.
Nevertheless, it’s a fantastic deal for anyone who has a friend or family member in the U.S., or who can easily pop over the border to pick one up. The specs are identical to the existing GSM version, including a pentaband radio and 16GB of internal storage. This is the first time that the GSM model has been made available to Americans.
Rubin also said that there are 300 million Android devices globally, and over 500,000 apps available in Google Play.
Source: Google Mobile Blog
Via: AndroidCentral
