The Nexus 4 has been rather hard to find up until this point. The delays began from day one and have continued up through the present day. On the subject of availability, or more specifically, on the subject of the lack of availability — we have seen LG blame the high demand, we have seen Google blame LG and we have even seen LG blame Google.
Regardless of who has blamed who in the past, it looks like we have another LG exec that has been talking. The latest is Cathy Robin who is the Director of Mobile Communication for LG France and she recently spoke with Challenges.fr. The interesting part here, Cathy Robin talked about several Nexus 4 topics including the inventory situation and even the recent sales estimates.
Lets touch of the sales estimates first. These go back to the serial number dissections that we saw earlier in the month. You remember, the one where (based on serial numbers), it was believed that Google and LG had sold about 375,000 Nexus 4 handsets. Simply put, that number was not accurate. According to Robin, she is not familiar with the 375k figure, however she did say that number is much lower than the reality.
Moving over to the touchier subject and Robin was not quite ready to fully throw Google under the bus. She did however say that Google had provided sales estimates based on previous Nexus devices and those turned out to be much less than the demand for the Nexus 4. Of course, that is sort of throwing the blame towards Google. Regardless though, it is looking like the lack of inventory situation will be changing. Robin mentioned that Nexus 4 production will be increased and the available inventory should soon catch up to the demand.
Finally, Robin also commented on the subject of LG and Google selling the Nexus 4 at a loss. According to her statements, LG has no interest in selling the device at a loss. She didn’t go into specifics, however she did say that they (LG and Google) have an agreement in place to sell the Nexus 4 at a very attractive price and she believes that the current price points reflect that.
[device id=3766]
[via phoneArena]
They refused to ship it to some countries (e.g. the Netherlands) and they still can’t handle it… Sheesh…
Might as well wait for the Nexus 5 now…JOKING!
suck my balls, LG!
I got mine today!!! 😀
really low sales!
Eh?
This doesn’t surprise me – everyone moans about it not being for sale via Google Play but it is available in branch and the networks seem to have ample quantities of them. I got mine via Carphone Warehouse last week and it took one day to arrive.