Google Is Selling the Nexus 5 Below Wholesale Price Through Google Play

The Nexus 5 hopla is finally settling down after a little more than a week – tempers are in check and reason is entering back into the picture.  Reviewers are reviewing, analyzing, and reporting their findings…all pretty much what we expected – camera and battery questions keep coming up, but from what I have seen the pictures look pretty good.  The jury is still out on the battery life, but it doesn’t look like even Android 4.4 KitKat is going to make it last much longer than the Nexus 4′s.  So now, all we have left to do is to make that purchase and where you buy your Nexus 5 will depend a lot on how much you pay.

While Google Play may not be the only place you can buy a Nexus 5, it seems that it is certainly the cheapest place to purchase your next Nexus “baby.” For instance, in the U.K., Google is selling the 16GB variety at £299 ($481), but some retailers are charging as much as £425 ($643)! It is not entirely the retailers fault, as the price on Google Play is actually less than the retailers must pay to their wholesalers.

The Guardian reports that some retailers are having to pay £350 ($563) from the wholesalers and the retailers in turn, must sell it for more to make a profit. Even the retailers that buy it direct from LG are paying up to $80 more than the Google Play price. As most items Google sells, they are near to, or slightly above their costs – they do not generally sell items at a loss. Ben Wood, mobile analyst with research firm CCS Insight said:

We saw the same thing with the Nexus 4. With the Nexus line, Google always goes for very aggressive pricing with its manufacturing partner.

Google will only sell around 1-2m Nexus 5s, but they will be bought by key people – Android evangelists, developers and influencers – spreading the Android brand.

This spreading the “Android brand” also benefits the makers of the Nexus line – LG’s reputation really got a boost last November when they produced the Nexus 4. This year they went on to release a new flagship, their LG G2, to stellar reviews, and the Nexus 5 is based largely after that device.

So while you may wait a couple more weeks for your Nexus 5 to arrive, if you order it directly from Google at the Play Store, you will certainly save yourself some money for that wait. Let us know in the comments or in Google+ if you have purchased your Nexus 5 through Google or if you bought it from a retailer and what price did you pay?