Nexus 4 demand 10 times higher than Google expected | Hacker News Reader

Nexus 4 demand 10 times higher than Google expected

crave.cnet.co.uk

40 pointsmtgx56 comments

"LG says it takes about six weeks to increase the frequency of deliveries. Happily, from mid-February, LG will ramp up production of the Nexus 4. Finally!"

So ... if it's 6 weeks to increase production ... and it's on sale since November 13th 2012 ... what are they doing ?

Bullshit.

Calling the excrement of cattle a wonderful tool for increasing crop yields isn't lying, its marketing :-)

I expect LG picked its words very very carefully to be strictly true.

So I don't for a moment doubt that, everything else being equal, it takes 6 weeks to change the factory mix. I haven't seen a statement from them that they changed the mix on Nexus 4's, just that in general such a change, if they ordered it, would take six weeks. Its equivocating to be sure but strictly true.

I know three people who got Nexus 4s here in the US and two of them had them replaced due to screen failures (on one half the screen went dark, on the other excessive bad pixels). But I don't think LG has been very up front about quality issues, but generally I don't think anyone is unless it blows up like Antenna-gate or something.

One thing I do know, all three of my friends think it is the best android phone ever and one of them is a convert from an iPhone 4S. It wouldn't be the first time some company released a highly acclaimed but unmanufacturable product.

I think it's quite likely that LG has some sort of yield issues going on. If they have to do some redesign work to increase yield and thus update the production line, this time delta starts to make some sense. It can't be just a simple ramp up problem that they're facing.

If my Nexus is any indication, they've been busying sending out replacements for the defective devices they made.

Which components were bad for you btw?

The screen- it had yellow patches, and at various times (usually when hot- which was another issue) it started flickering and distorting horribly.

I've heard from others that they also had screen issues. This would definitely be a potential reason for yield issues and a redesign need.

I have a nexus 4 for a month now. no issues. Hardware is great

Still no numbers on how many actually sold. Ten times an unknown number is still an unknown number.

Is there any upside to releasing sales numbers? Even the high estimates are far below the iPhone or Galaxy S3, so the numbers would just be used to justify arguments that the Nexus is a failure.

Ugh, I'd selfishly hope they never release those numbers. I hope the Nexus brand sticks around. I was so sad when they claimed they wouldn't make another after Nexus One. Glad that didn't wind up being true.

Though, frankly, I don't expect them to give Verizon the time of day going forward.

I expect Verizon will get tons of love from Google... right after they start running VoLTE on that sweet, sweet open-access band.

They probably expected several hundred thousand, and the demand has been in the several millions.

It's still hard to say who screwed up, but ultimate responsibly lies with Google. The Nexus 4 has got to be one of the biggest launch screw-ups ever.

Well, they did just have the Nexus Q just 6 months earlier...

And all those google TVs that eric schmidt kept going on about.

Google is ultimately the one who screwed up first, but they've had weeks to fix this and LG does not show a lot of evidence of movement here. Both of these companies will lose out on a a boatload of cash if they don't get this solved yesterday, because this is Android, son. There will be a better phone out next month. Google and LG have to fix this while the demand is still very high.

Its debatable whether Google or LG are losing out on anything. We just don't know enough. For example, what if Google is selling the Nexus 4 at a loss? Selling more means losing more money.

Whatever is the cause for the limited supply, there has been plenty of time to address the problems, if the parties were truly motivated. At this point, I can't help feeling that the supply constraints were intended.

>For example, what if Google is selling the Nexus 4 at a loss?

An interesting question would be whether Google or LG is (potentially) selling the phone at a loss.

There's a theory. Produce an awesome, unobtainable android phone. Hope people will give up on the phone but not android and buy a different model that is profitable.

It wouldn't be the first time that Google releases something in very limited quantities and very high demand. In fact, they do it every year (Google IO tickets), and raise the stakes every time. In fact, the Nexus 4 release was very reminiscent of Google IO ticket ordering. Google seems to love to tout how quickly X sold out.

I couldn't wait long enough, so I got a Huawei Ascend D1 Quad. It out specs almost every phone in the market. The brand is virtually unknown, so they threw everything on this quad-core 1.5GHz machine.

It upgraded itself Android 4.0.4, and it's jailbroken by default.

It bests the IPhone5 and Nexus on specs, and costs $200 less than either.

"It bests the IPhone5 and Nexus on specs"

No it doesn't. Benchmarks lower than HTC One X, disappointing btty life, etc. [1].

"and costs $200 less than either."

No it doesn't. $425 off contract [2], which is $200 cheaper than the iphone but is $100 more than the Nexus 4. This is perhaps a defensible claim if you got it free on your carrier but that's a blanket statement that won't apply to most people.

[1] http://www.slashgear.com/huawei-ascend-d1-quad-xl-review-152...

http://reviews.cnet.com/smartphones/huawei-ascend-d1-quad/45...

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3293286/huawei-ascend-d1-qu...

It looks like this phone was a world beater when it was announced in Feb 2012 and I'm sure it's still a solid phone but it's not going to win any best in show awards today.

It costs $200 less than the Nexus 4? Where can I buy it off-contract for $199?

Yeah, best price I can find is $489 on eBay.

Nexus goes for $600+ in Australia, IPhone $750.

I bought my Ascend for $425 from JB Hifi

My Nexus 4 was $350 straight from Google, unlocked and unsubsidized.

shrug

There is where the dollar symbol is less than useful. USD != AUD.

$350 USD, sorry.

Current exchange rate is 1.00 AUD = 1.05045 USD, though, so the AUS price is still wacky high.

damn you lucky. Other places that have stock have jacked the price up to $550 or so.

I'm assuming it means compared to the on contract N4s.

The brand is virtually unknown

I would say they are fairly well known in the US... for selling net work gear with back doors for the Chinese government.

Mostly I kid, I work next to some of their offices in Dallas they have so so Chinese food in their cafeteria.

That's great, and I love that Huawei can bring such specs at quite a low price point. But specs aren't everything. How is the UI responsiveness? Does the phone itself feel sturdy? I keep thinking there must be something wrong with it, but it might just be some irrational sense of "you get what you pay for".

A lot of people around here have that irrational sense. It took a while for me to shake it off, but I'm glad I did.

It's not entirely irrational though... looking at two identically-specced products I would choose the one with a higher build quality, which is often more expensive. So there is some correlation. Doesn't mean that more expensive always means better quality though.

The one killer feature a Nexus device has for me is that they are the first devices to get Android updates pushed to them when major updates arrive.

That ``jailbroken by default" thing really amuses me. It's very Chinese :-)

It is worth pointing out that it is not only the people in UK and Germany ho are ordering it. Where I live the 16GB model sells for 600€. This leads people to order the phone trough middlemans in Google Store -countries, like Germany, for roughly 400€.

Someone in a previous HN post suggested that companies sometimes release limited stock in the first run so that they can then get a 'high demand' PR boost for the second. Could this be what is happening here?

That only works when you're able to satisfy demand within a reasonable time-scale i.e. the iPhone.

However, the Nexus 4 had a big "Out of Stock" sign on the page which, the longer it remains, the worse it makes Google look.

A dollar today is more valuable than a dollar tomorrow.

not if your dollar tomorrow can buy you more for less... it's all relative

This is simply a massive failure on the part of Google's product managers, or whoever conducts market research at Google. If a demand for a product is within some percent of the estimate, that's normal. If it is an entire order of magnitude greater, someone somewhere fucked up big time, costing Google a lot of money in orders that cannot be fulfilled.

Once you go stock Android, you never go back. I love my Nexus 7 and the frequent, direct OTA updates from Google. My AT&T Samsung Galaxy S2 got an update in the last month that turned it into a freezing, battery-draining, glitchy machine with no patch to fix it in site. I will never buy a non-stock Android phone again.

Perhaps not back, but maybe sideways.

My first Android phone was an HTC Hero. It was vastly improved when I replaced the moribund HTC-customised OS with Cyanogenmod. That's why, when I needed to replace it, I went with a stock Android phone: a Nexus S.

However, whilst my Nexus S still works fine, Google have effectively abandoned it - it won't get any more updates - so one of my projects for this weekend is to root it and try out Cyanogenmod on it.

This is exactly why the "you can buy another great Android device" argument falls face first into the ground for me.

How long can I expect my (at the time) top of the line phone to continue getting the latest OS updates? Additionally, how many (if any) phones get thoroughly tested for OS compatibility and performance for new Android updates? Do I really want to take an unnecessary roll of the dice?

I realize this isn't exactly what you're asking, but most all capable Android devices end up being able to run far-future software via the custom ROM community. My old HTC Sensation (launched May 19, 2011, running Android 2.3) happily runs Android 4.2 thanks to the Android developer community. Even my old underspecced Nexus 1 can run 4.2!

The OTA support may not be there, but that doesn't mean you're hard-stuck with an older version of Android on the device.

I've got the Nexus 4 page bookmarked, and have been checking it so often that it's hit my new tab page in Chrome ...

I got mine a month or so ago and they announced both time so far before it went on sale.

If you're just checking randomly you're unlikely to get it in time before it sells out :(

Hope springs eternal ... and I've still got a couple months left on my (terrible Canadian) 3-year contract - rocking the original Samsung Galaxy, obsolete OS, broken headphone jack and all.

I really wanted to order a Nexus 4. I couldn't, so I got an iPhone 5 instead.

I'd consider that a failure on Google's part, for a total lack of communication, and for seeming conflicts of interest when the same device is offered subsidised by a network (defeating the point). It might as well be vapourware.

Not really. Plenty of other Android phones that you could have ordered.

No other Android phones would come with a virtual guarantee of timely Android updates. iPhone5 is guaranteed to get timely iOS updates.

Also, other Android phones would come with the OS modified by the carrier.

He did not want any Android phone, he said he wanted an Nexus 4. For 300$ and those specs is quite a catch.

I did the exact same thing, and: none of the other android phones are any good. They either lack the latest OS update, are plasticky crap (Galaxy S3), loaded up with vendor-specific crap, etc.

They are fun devices, enjoy it better than the Nexus One I'd been using. It sux that they still don't include expandable storage, unlike Nexus One, I wasn't going to upgrade but these were too cool for me to pass up.

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