The Google Nexus Q.
The company has indefinitely delayed shipment of the Nexus Q, the spherical black media device it introduced in June for playing music and video from Android devices. It told customers who ordered it that it needed more work.
The Q is Google’s maiden attempt at making its own hardware (and, unusually, is manufactured in the United States). But curiously, it is the software, which is Google’s typical area of expertise, that needs the work.
Google wrote that it was responding to “initial feedback from users that they want Nexus Q to do even more than it does today,” though it added that “the industrial design and hardware were met with great enthusiasm.”
The delay is significant because the Nexus Q is central to Google’s high-stakes competition with Apple, Microsoft and Amazon.com to control the living room. For people who have already built up collections of music, TV shows and movies on iTunes, for instance, it is easier to use Apple devices, and once people own Apple devices, it is easier to buy media from Apple.
The Q is also crucial to Google’s fledgling efforts to connect home devices to the Internet through an initiative called Android@Home. For example, Google eventually wants Internet-connected refrigerators to order eggs automatically when the supply is low.
In stark contrast to Google’s Nexus 7 tablet, also unveiled in June, initial reviews of the Nexus Q were lukewarm. David Pogue wrote in The New York Times that it was “baffling.” People can plug it in to TVs or speakers to listen to music or play video from their Android phones or tablets, similar to devices like Apple TV, Boxee and Roku.
But at $299, the Nexus Q is much more expensive than those products and does less. It only plays music, movies and TV shows from Google Play’s limited collection and YouTube, and can be controlled only from Android devices. Google promoted the Q’s ability to make listening to music social because people could change songs from their own Android devices, but early users said the process was cumbersome — and it isn’t clear that people have a burning desire to do that.
Google declined to say when the new and improved Nexus Q would ship or provide details about what the changes would be. But it made those who ordered the device happy by announcing that it would send them a free version of the original device soon.