Google's unlocked Nexus 4 sale fail

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Was it a case of bait and switch or did Google really not have enough stock of its anticipated Nexus 4 smartphones to sell to buyers. 

Either way, today's sale fail doesn't speak well of Google who announced the new devices on October 29, generated intense hype and interest and then failed to deliver on product stock.

Google has been selling Nexus smartphones for years on its website. Now joined by 7 and 10-inch tablets, the Nexus brand aims to bring users the best Pure Google experience of the latest Android software on heavily discounted hardware.

Announced two weeks ago, the Nexus 4, being sold unlocked for $309, is an Android superphone made by LG for Google and it was to be made available for sale today in Google's Play Store together with new Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 tablets. Google offered a sign up form days approaching the November 13 but never sent users a notice on when the devices would be available. 

Various buyers were dissapointed when they visited the Google Play website today to find out that the Nexus 4 was unavailable for sale and was listed as "Coming Soon." No other explanation was offered.

Reports from the US and UK cited that their stock sold out within an hour but at least buyers in those countries had stock to begin with. It seems that stock in the Canadian store was sold out in minutes. 

I personally tried to buy a 8GB Nexus 4 and was able to get as far as a shopping cart before the Google Play website apparently crashed. Repeated visits to the Nexus 4 homepage showed that both the 8GB and 16 GB units were out of stock.

The Nexus 7 as well as the Nexus 10 tablets seemed to be well in stock in all configurations. Was Google hoping to divert customer's attention to the tablets instead?

Unlocked and with a $309 price, the Nexus 4 is an extremely attractive smartphone. Aside from featuring the latest build of Android's Jelly Bean OS, it also brings a formidable quad-core Snapdragon processor, improved camera and a large 4.7-inch resolution screen. The Nexus 4 lacks LTE connectivity which many of the competing top-tier smartphones have as a standard feature.

Google also seems to have timed the release of the Nexus 4 right when a bevy of impressive Windows Phone 8 devices are coming to market. Flagship handsets like Nokia's Lumia 920 and HTC's Windows Phone 8X arrive in stores this week, marking the official entry of Microsoft's brave new mobile OS and ecosystem.