R.I.P. Nexus One - Google will no longer sell handsets online. It's likely their in-store/carrier products will be a follow-up to the Nexus one, IMO - along with other Android products they'll promote from their web site.

This dovetails amazingly well with a thought I had last night while watching Survivor. Most phones are disposable products wrapped in disposable brands. Apart from Apple, I don't really know anyone successfully retailing their own mobile products. Palm's Pre was repeatedly referred to as the "Sprint Phone" and "Sprint's Pre" and a few times as "Palm Pre by Sprint." It's clear this is the way the carriers like it, but it hasn't worked well for Palm at all. If you produce a boatload of irrelevant phone models like Motorola, Samsung, LG ad others, and your customer are the carriers, then you're still likely going to move enough units to make a decent showing.

But you can't set up to be a premium product like the iPhone AND straddle that same-old carrier model. It won't work. It hasn't worked. The closest I've ever seen outside of the iPhone was the RAZR from Motorola.

The best you can probably hope for is a variation and what RIM is doing, a ton of products, but all wrapped tightly in the Blackberry brand. It works for them. I'm amazed every day that other mobile phone producers don't get this.