(By Rich Bieglmeier) Android Central says the Nexus 4 smartphone from Google is in stock, again, and finally ready for shipment. The website announced that Google (GOOG) sent out e-mails proclaiming sales will resume in the U.S. today at noon PST. The smartphone went on sale November 13 but sold out of its initial stock within minutes. That's has to be a good sign – right?
As we like to do with these things, iStock typed in the URL for Google Trends to see how all these new phones stock up. For today's purposes, we examined U.S. search volume intensity within the last 30 days for Apple's (AAPL) iPhone 5, Samsung's Galaxy S3, Nokia's (NOK) Lumina 920, Research In Motion's (RIMM) BlackBerry 10, and Google's Nexus 4.
The world-wide-web is the ultimate shopping mall, keywords the store addresses, and search volume virtual foot traffic. iStock trusts the invisible hand of you, the consumer, to tell us who the winners are and will be. Let's examine the results.
Our first observation, Nokia and Research in Motion – R.I.P. – nobody is searching for either phone. A few people in California have an interest in the Lumina. Meanwhile, BlackBerry 10 queries register in only 12 states. Investors might consider avoiding those flat-liners.
So, all you analysts and hedgies hyping either stock, stop it, the clocking is ticking towards double zeroes for both. Their only hope could be that the right celebrities start using their smartphones – look what Michael Jordan did for Nike (NKE) back in the day - or being bought out by a competitor for their patent portfolios.
And then there were three. The iPhone is the unquestionable King of the Smartphone Hill in the USA. Online searches are 44% higher for the iPhone 5 than for the runner-up Galaxy S3. The surprise here is the potential success of Google's Nexus 4.
When the Nexus hit the market on November 13 (really? releasing a new product on the 13th, isn't Google just asking for trouble?), the number of searches for Nexus 4 came this l—l close to catching Samsung's Galaxy S3.
At the start of the month, Samsung sold more than 30 million Galaxy S3 smartphones in about five months. Research firm IDC, research shows South Korean based Samsung is the planet's top smartphone dealer in the past nine months. During July through September, Samsung sold 56.3 million smartphones versus Apple's 26.9 million, so says IDC.
iStock believes the Nexus 4 with all the Google apps is a part of a sneaky, yet savvy campaign. We wrote an article in late August titled, Google Inc. (GOOG) Is Open For Business. The story is about a set of Google+ features, designed specifically for businesses that will be free through the end of 2013.
Think about it, everybody has a Gmail account already. If your company uses Gmail, Google Calendars, Drive, Docs, Hangout and other apps and then syncs all of it up with a Google phone made to work perfectly with these apps, it's a very powerful tool for efficiency and productivity. It's a combination that neither Apple nor Samsung can match, in our view. If Google's management can make the most of the synergies, and maintain enough supply, search volume intensity and sales could make the smartphone (and tablets) a bigger threat to iPhone and Galaxy than anybody is willing to admit.