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Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

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Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#151

Post by taligent »

hnalien wrote: post #98
hnalien wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update at 10:30 AM PST - 16gb model said 'In Stock', I added to cart and the message says 'There was a problem with your order' with a big blue button saying 'GO SHOPPING!' I would expect better E-Commerce management from Google, who claims to have the brightest people working for it.

Update at 11:30 PST - Bought the 16GB successsfully. Took 2 mins. I believe the 'Sold Out' news in the morning drove more customers curiously to the Google Play website, thus letting them buy it today even if they wanted to wait. No one wants a supply issue like the iPhone 5. As I thought, Google is way smarter than Apple to be prepared for high volume sales on it's platform. Well played, Google.

> As I thought, Google is way smarter than Apple to be prepared for high volume sales on it's platform.

Haha. You have to laugh at how ridiculous this comment is.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#152

Post by taligent »

duck wrote: post #57
mikegioia wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand why they don't take pre-orders. Even if it's just a "pledge" and not a transfer of money it would serve the double purpose of demand-sizing and wait-listing.

On a small scale that could work, but I don't think it would work well at something like consumer smartphones. They could look "bad" twice: 1) if they don't get enough pledges and 2) not being able to fulfill pledges because of too much demand.

What are you talking about ? Apple allowed pre-orders for the iPhone.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#153

Post by Greynum »

fragsworth wrote: post #131
Greynum wrote: post #88

There are 8600 likes on google+ for the Nexus 4. If you are very generous you could say that would translate to 860,000 purchases. No decent smartphone manufacture plans for sales of less than 1 million units of its flagship product. The fact that the nexus 4 sold out in every country it was sold within one hour would only demonstrate complete operational incompetence on every level to be that far off the mark. It's…

Translating "like" numbers to sales figures makes absolutely zero sense.

That was a Google+ Number not a Face Book Number.

Yes if you are Google and you keep track of all of these things you can quite accurately translate those metrics into potential sales.

Especially when you can build Plus Ones profiles for every phone every made then correlate that to actual sales figures. It's not 100% accurate but it's certainly accurate enough not to go out of stock in 1 hour.

Its Google entire business model last time I checked.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#154

Post by dangrossman »

mgkimsal wrote: post #135
kalleboo wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if they only take a hold to ensure the funds are on the card, many (most?) banks won't tell you that the money wasn't charged yet, and they'll make it unavailable.

"many (most?) banks won't tell you that the money wasn't charged yet" WTF? I can log in to any bank and it'll tell me within a few moments of when a charge was made.

> I can log in to any bank and it'll tell me within a few moments of when a charge was made.

No you can't; that's exactly the issue. Most people don't know the difference between an authorization and a charge. What you see on online banking as "pending charges" or "holds" are authorizations. No money has moved hands -- your bank balance has not gone down, the merchant's bank balance has not gone up, there's not even an in-flight ACH somewhere yet to be processed.

Literally all these entries on your online banking represent is a message of intent from the merchant to charge that much to your card in the near future. Even your bank does not yet know if the merchant actually captured the funds and they'll be settled (the money will move) soon or if they only performed the authorization. They could void the authorization or let it expire itself without ever charging the card.

Hence the comment -- even if Google only performs an authorization, it looks to the customer like they paid, and the bank won't tell the customer otherwise. That makes using authorizations to hold preorders untenable from a customer service standpoint even if it were technically possible, which it really isn't due to the short period authorizations are valid outside the hotel, travel and rental industries.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#155

Post by Greynum »

mrinterweb wrote: post #122
ryanhuff wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does feel that Google celebrates what I feel is actually incompetence.

We don't know how many units were shipped. We don't know if Google is celebrating this or if they knew this would happen. It is possible that LG has supply chain issues and they can not crank out phones to meet demand.

Predicting market demand is Google's entire business model.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#156

Post by rufugee »

TrisMcC wrote: post #150
rufugee wrote: post #141

So if I'm on Verizon and I buy this, what speeds should I expect? I'd be ok with HSPA+ speeds (I find Verizon LTE to be extremely underwhelming), but as I understand it, Verizon doesn't do HSPA+. What will the Nexus 4 fall back to?

This phone will not work on Verizon or Sprint.

Wow...so to insure working across all carriers, they cut out two very large carriers? This doesn't make sense to me.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#157

Post by taligent »

Greynum wrote: post #88

There are 8600 likes on google+ for the Nexus 4. If you are very generous you could say that would translate to 860,000 purchases. No decent smartphone manufacture plans for sales of less than 1 million units of its flagship product. The fact that the nexus 4 sold out in every country it was sold within one hour would only demonstrate complete operational incompetence on every level to be that far off the mark. It's…

>There are 8600 likes on google+ for the Nexus 4. If you are very generous you could say that would translate to 860,000 purchases.

Are you serious ? Tell me you're not this stupid.

Re: Google's Nexus 4 smartphone sells out in the US in 50 minutes

#159

Post by jxi »

rufugee wrote: post #156
TrisMcC wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This phone will not work on Verizon or Sprint.

Wow...so to insure working across all carriers, they cut out two very large carriers? This doesn't make sense to me.

Uh.. they didn't 'cut out' anything. If anything, it's the carriers that are stupid for not adopting the same standard of using sim cards (Verizon and Sprint don't use sim cards..). I think they wanted to lock people in to their service.
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