Live data from Hacker News

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

thenextweb.com

1–10 of 215 posts

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

#2
It sold out way quicker than that. I tried to purchase it right away, had a phone in my cart, then when I went to checkout, it was gone and said Coming Soon. This was within the first 10 minutes of the phone going on sale.

UPDATE: The store is back up. 16gb appear to be sold out, but I just successfully purchased an 8gb model.

ANOTHER UPDATE: I just bought the 16gb model successfully as well. Both orders show as pending in my Google Wallet account.

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

#3
It would be nice if Google would release some sales numbers on this. I'd imagine it would sell well in Europe where the lack of LTE is not an issue. I don't see it selling that well in the US, most people here get new phones every two years when their contracts are up at subsidized pricing.

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

#5
The Google store was extremely slow during this period. I tried to initiate a purchase around 5 minutes after they became available, but 95% of my clicks resulted in errors, and when it finally went through, the Wallet info collector hung for another 5 minutes. When that finally went through, my cart had had the phone removed from it, and they were once again out of stock.

So the 50 minutes is probably somewhat inflated. Had the store kept pace it probably would've been more like 10 minutes.

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

#7
post #3

It would be nice if Google would release some sales numbers on this. I'd imagine it would sell well in Europe where the lack of LTE is not an issue. I don't see it selling that well in the US, most people here get new phones every two years when their contracts are up at subsidized pricing.

In Canada contracts are still typically three years. I've been salivating over this for months.

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

#8
post #2

It sold out way quicker than that. I tried to purchase it right away, had a phone in my cart, then when I went to checkout, it was gone and said Coming Soon. This was within the first 10 minutes of the phone going on sale. UPDATE: The store is back up. 16gb appear to be sold out, but I just successfully purchased an 8gb model. ANOTHER UPDATE: I just bought the 16gb model successfully as well. Both orders show as pend…

I had a similar experience. I was refreshing the page at 8:30-8:40 and when it finally gave me "add to cart" I spent about 10-15 minutes trying to get through until finally got sent back to "coming soon". It was very fast.

I understand possibly wanting marketing hype from selling out quickly, but the cryptic error messages and lack of performance on the server (from arguably the biggest internet company in the world) was disappointing.

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

#9
post #5

The Google store was extremely slow during this period. I tried to initiate a purchase around 5 minutes after they became available, but 95% of my clicks resulted in errors, and when it finally went through, the Wallet info collector hung for another 5 minutes. When that finally went through, my cart had had the phone removed from it, and they were once again out of stock. So the 50 minutes is probably somewhat infla…

This is surprising. Not that it sold out after 10 minutes, but that Google didn't handle the load well.

I wonder why - surely they expected this (if nothing else, given the performance of the phone in other markets).

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

#10
Luckily, I got my order through albeit with a good share of issues.

-> Google Wallet pane opening empty

-> Google Wallet pane opening with an error message

-> Google Wallet pane not opening and me receiving a top of the window notification saying they are working hard on resolving the issue

-> Google wallet opening, with info. I then clicked purchase and it wouldnt go through.

After multiple times trying it, losing my cart a few times, I got a N4 8GB order through. Should ship in two days.

Post reply on HN