The Google Nexus One launch has become the most controversial and confusing Android handset launch to date. With publicity “leaks” over the holiday season, the Nexus One handset received unprecedented buzz. This same hype helped create the expectation of a revolutionary Android handset and its potential to be an iPhone killer. To gauge the success of Google’s first handset launch, Flurry leveraged its analytics reach to estimate launch week sales of the Nexus One.

Flurry monitors usage of more than 10,000 developers’ applications on iPhone and Android platforms. In total, Flurry tracks applications on approximately four out of every five iPhone and Android handsets in the market, generating over 25 million end user sessions per day. To estimate first week sales totals for the Nexus One, myTouch 3G, Droid and iPhone 3GS, Flurry detected new handsets within its system, and then made adjustments to account for varying levels of Flurry application penetration by handset. Flurry additionally crosschecked its estimates against Apple actual sales, released for iPhone 3GS, which totaled more than one million units over the three days, June 19 – 21, 2009. Flurry first week sales estimates can be found in the table below.

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