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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

#61

Post by mitchty »

freehunter wrote: post #38
ryanhuff wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sold well enough in the US to bring Google's Play Store to its knees.

I would still like to see some sales data. While I wouldn't expect Google to do anything like this, there exists the possibility that a company could create the appearance of a massive sales by limited the supply and slowing their servers, effectively making people think the phone sold out in massive enough numbers to bring down their services. Artificial supply constraints is a well known and commonly used tactic to…

Not only that but I'd like more companies to do the same thing Apple has done with stating units actually put into customer hands versus send off to sales channels/etc...

Would make it easier to guage/compare sales amongst the companies.

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

#62

Post by thechut »

paulgb wrote: post #36
gergles wrote: post #24

The fact that it is 2012 and stores still refuse to just let you give them money and then have them ship you a product is ridiculous. I don't want to sit here and wait for a store to open or for things to come 'back in stock' to buy a phone. That's why we invented computers, to automate boring tasks. I give you money, you put my name on a list, as phones come in, you ship them in the order of the names on the list. P…

This is nice in theory. I think this doesn't happen because when you take people's money they're suddenly your "customers" and think they're entitled to a phone ASAP and if there are any unexpected delays you have upset the hoard. As soon as you take someone's money, they're a customer support liability.

This! Google just recently saw this happen with the Nexus 7 this summer. People were charged when they preordered and then the lack of a hard ship date caused Google to have to spend countless hours in customer support. Once somebody has paid you, the can of worms is open.

They could also want to control the amount of unearned revenue on their books.

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

#64

Post by alanctgardner2 »

goatforce5 wrote: post #32
sareon wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am almost done my three year contract with Bell. I don't mind them so I don't mind staying with them. I want the N4 and I talked to retentions about what I could get post-plan if I brought in my own phone. They seemed quite confused and couldn't give me any better deals than a new customer. If I had gotten one of their subsidized phoned on a new 3-year deal they would have been able to give me a better deal. I woul…

The Canadian carriers don't seem very interested in doing favorable deals for bring-your-own-phone customers. Either it's still too small a segment or (perhaps more likely) they've figured out they can lock people in to more 3 year contracts if there's no difference in the month-to-month prices. I've seen Bell occasionally do promos where you can take $5/$10 off any plan if you have your own phone, but not much besid…

See my (brother?) comment, this phone will work on an AWS carrier like Wind or Mobilicity, and their plans are between 50% and 75% of RoBelus

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

#65

Post by dmm »

ars wrote: post #54
dmm wrote: post #16

This means that the price of the Nexus 4 isn't $299. It's actually about $490, the current buy-it-now price on ebay.

You can't use the Buy-it-now price, since that's the I-wish price. Check auction prices.

I just looked at the sold listings. The Nexus 4 looks like it's going for $460-499.

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

#67

Post by notaddicted »

benihana wrote: post #19

I'd love to see numbers to compare this to the sale of previous iPhones. My gut instinct says this is a supply-side issue more than a popularity issue. Could google be keeping supply low to keep demand up? Or was this such a popular product (people reporting that this bringing the google store to its knees) that it sold out within minutes and google was just ill prepared for the popularity?

The iPhone 5 sold five million in the first three days. The phone was announced Sep-12, preorders opened Sep-14, sales opened Sep-21. If you look at the estimated BOM+manufacturing cost ($207) that means Apple probably had a billion dollars worth of iPhones sitting in their distribution network before they even started selling them.

Does Google have five million of these phones sitting in a warehouse? I doubt it, they probably manufactured based on historical Nexus sales figures, and I'd guess that the fact that this is sold out just means it is selling better than previous Nexus phones.

EDIT: I can't find a good source but my best estimate for the sales of the Galaxy Nexus (i.e. Nexus 3) is 100,000 per month based on sales of $250M over 6 months at $400 ea. [1]

[1] http://www.theverge.com/2012/8/20/3256590/samsung-galaxy-nex...

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

#69

Post by thebranman »

Its /kind of/ sold out - if you refresh enough it will allow you to add it to your cart. I took me about 30 minutes of refreshing, and about 15 failed attempts to add it to my cart, but I finally was able to check out successfully with a 16GB Nexus 4.

Order date: Nov 13, 2012 1:36:11 PM EST

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