[Nexus 4 General] cvfl:
After reflection, and knowing there are really intelligent folks on here - I'll go aheaad and correct myself now. I know full well there's not one distribution channel. There was the potential to be, but there was a decision not to. I'll explain.

Let's take the US. We all know it's a subsidy market sure - sharing revenue, cocking up the software etc. There was a huge potential to thumb their nose at the carrier segment, and say guess what? We value our customers, and we're giving them a direct opportunity to buy from us. Sorry, your in store carrier offering is going to have to wait 6 months. So that would have meant only 1 distribution channel in column C, per country. Easy peasy. Not to mention the effect on margin to Google and protection of their core brand. But no, now we have a situation where not only the total demand for all of column C blew the forecast out of the water, but I'm sure every segment (each country level distribution channel) forecast blew up the farm.

Now what happens you might ask? Grab your popcorn kiddos. Allocation mode ensues. Each country manager now has a decision to make - send volume a) to the carrier - who is a guaranteed sale, is going to be taking future Google products, who will provide some marketing spend to give us prominent placement in holiday ads and shelf space; or b) cvfl - who just wants to hand us $660 for 2 8gb variants. And guess what? The carrier makes you screw up your manufacturing capacity, because now you have a viariant that has their SW, multiple colors, multiple accessory bundles, because all the carriers want to be "differentiated". So now there goes 250K volume from the direct channel, to TMOUS. How screwed up is that?

You had a chance fellas, and you blew it. And now all these outstanding people, NOT in an 'entry' product category, are pissed off and REALLY know how your business works. You country managers better start whipping up a plan to make things whole with us - like free Orbs or Bumpers, and bust out the customer satisfaction cost center. And start talking to us - because <insert deity here> bless the internet, we talk to each other.

This internet thing sure is a hoot.

And if someone in Mountain View actually does read this - I wonder if I haven't burned a bridge here, I wanted to let you know that me and my merry band of project folks are available to come in and let you know exactly how to make sure this NEVER happens again, or even how to dig yourself out now. I'll let you know now we have fairly standard level consulting fees - but the difference is we actually earn that hourly rate both in quality and speed. I say that because at this time most of us actually have other gigs (myself I started my own biz in a totally unrelated industry), so we'll have to gingerly plan how timing wise things could work. We're a very experienced team of PMP certified, SAP and other SCM software knowledgeable folks. You can even use your existing core IT teams - we play nice. Just remember I'm a no BS kinda guy - I speak my mind, and always wear jeans. I also have the ability to talk to board members, but remember that I have integrity so I don't lie on anyone's behalf.