I was expecting them to have more inventory for world wide sales, not necessarily here in the US. I mean, in many markets where LTE is irrelevant and consumers are used to paying a lot outright for phones, the $300 Nexus has way more appeal than over here. Other than Apple, no one does/can round up inventory like Apple does.
~1 million is frequently thrown number for the GNex. Nexus 4? World wide, much strong sales that won't fade away quite as fast as they likely will in the US, guesstimate ~25 mil units sold elsewhere in the world by the time next one comes out. Sounds like a lot but really just a fraction of the market. ~2mil by end of the year in the US, another mil until the next one launches.
Agreed. I also don't think LG was much motivated for production, first because of being busy making their own stuff (that BTW isn't selling as well) and because of lack of financial incentive to ramp up production for device that makes them ~$200 less per unit.
I got the notification e-mail about hour and a half after I ordered.
Google Now would have managed this launch better than Google did.
Does it matter if LG was motivated or not? That's not why you botch a launch. Google's managing the launch, so they say to LG "Hey, we want 30,000 units by ____ date." LG doesn't just go "Oh well we'll make as many as we're motivated to make." No, it's a business relationship, so they either honor it or they let Google know the actual amount they make.
But at the end of the day, Google KNOWS how many units it can receive on hand by launch day, and it can forecast whether that date is even an acceptable launch day. They knew this weeks in advance.
I put this on Google more than anyone else. They should be able to have production information from LG. If LG is as unmotivated as you say and the price is that big of an influence on how much they feel like making, Google should still be able to manage that properly to launch with sufficient devices.
So yeah, I do think they knew they were screwed without enough launch units but nonetheless went for a botched launch.
1 million GNex on launch? Or what are you saying? Total sales = 1 million? Either way it's not like Apple moving 20 million iPhones a quarter or something, so to not be able to handle a launch like this is still pretty bad.
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