Just 20,000 Nexus Ones sold in week one

Google's much-hyped Nexus One smartphone may have launched earlier this month to a wildfire of media coverage, but a mobile analytics firm claims that real-world sales have been slow to follow.

Data from mobile analytics firm Flurry suggests that the Nexus One managed sales of just 20,000 in its first week, only a tiny fraction of the 1.6 million units shifted in the first week on sale of it's main rival, Apple's iPhone.

Flurry's figures are based on the details behind the Android and iPhone app usage figures it tracks, which show that the Nexus One currently only available on the T-Mobile network in the US and sold through Google's own online store has had a less-than-stellar beginning to its bid to topple Apple's all-powerful market-leader.

When it launched, Google said the Nexus One wasn't so much a smartphone as a "superphone", while Mario Queiroz, the company's vice president for product management, called the device's arrival "the next stage in the evolution of Android".

But the Nexus One's figures have been less than super. Flurry compared first-week US sales of the Nexus One with three other major smartphones the iPhone, the HTC Magic (sold as the T-Mobile MyTouch in the US) and the Motorola MILESTONE (sold as the DROID in the US).

And while the iPhone's numbers left all its rivals trailing, the DROID and MyTouch, with 250,000 and 60,000 units sold respectively, also left Google trailing.

But given the restricted availability of the Nexus One thus far and considering the huge build-up to the iPhone's launch versus the far shorter and quieter lead-in to the Google phone's arrival (barely anyone knew anything about it as little as a month before its January 5 launch), Google is unlikely to read anything into the 80-to-1 first-week trouncing by Apple.

Indeed, it has already said it won't be too long before we see a second Android 2.1-powered Google handset aimed more at enterprise users.

The Nexus One will arrive in European markets courtesy of Vodafone sometime in the next month or so.