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Nexus 4 Production Ramps Up, Google Play Stock Returning Soon?

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The Nexus 4 may soon be back in stock in the Google Play store as sales estimates show LG may have doubled production in December, a trend we expect to see continue in January.

The LG Nexus 4 launch was a mess of out of stock issues due to overwhelming demand, but also because LG and or Google under-estimated demand, or couldn’t ramp up production fast enough.

Google and LG did not publicly release Nexus 4 sales numbers, but detective work in the xda forums indicate that LG produced less than 400,000 Nexus 4 devices in 2012. This is vastly below the 5 million iPhone 5 sales in that device’s first several months, but the real news is in the monthly production numbers.

Nexus 4 production is estimated at;

  • October – 70,000
  • November – 90,000
  • December – 210,000

That’s an increase of 2.3X from November, when the phone first went on sale in late November. Granted this is not as big of an increase over the November and October numbers, but it shows that LG and Google are ramping up to meet demand for the affordable, unlocked pure Google device.

Read: How to Know When the Nexus 4 is Back in Stock

Nexus 4 owners were able to use their Nexus 4 IMEI number to estimate how many Nexus 4 units LG produced in 2012.

Nexus 4 in Stock Soon

The Nexus 4 sales numbers reveal LG is ramping up production and the Nexus 4 may be back in stock soon.

By using the IMEI number, Nexus 4 owners can backtrack their phone on LG’s site to get a long string of numbers which includes the line or production number. This number shows the how many of the devices are made.

The Nexus 4 unit we bought shows, 024790, indicating that it is the 24,790th Nexus 4 produced.

Owners can check their Nexus 4 by finding the IMEI number in Settings -> About phone -> Status.

Follow this link, to a tool normally used to check LG firmware updates and type in the IMEI number at the end.

Based on the details discovered with this method, it appears that Google and LG produced less than 400,000 LG Nexus 4 devices in 2013, explaining the launch issues and out of stock messages that brought frustration to the launch.

Google did not provide an estimate for when the Nexus 4 will be in stock in the Google Play Store again. The first several sales in the Google Play store were a mess of out of stock messages and rapid sellouts.

If Google and LG are now able to produce over 200,000 Nexus 4 devices per month, we could see the Nexus 4 back in stock in the Google Play store before the end of the month. T-Mobile is already planning to offer the Nexus 4 in all stores by the end of January, so we may soon see the end of the Nexus 4 shortages.

3 Comments

3 Comments

  1. benurd

    01/03/2013 at 3:42 pm

    Ha! Thanks for providing the link to xda and explaining how to get the link to work. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to produce anything last night. You have to put your IMEI number after the link, duh lol. Well my Nexii is number 168,222 and apparently was manufactured on 12/04/2012 that was 8 days before I received it. Cool to know. Actually, it was my Nexxi and Google Now that directed me to this site last month, because there was a similar article to something I read. I have been hooked on this site every since then,

  2. Logos

    01/07/2013 at 5:33 pm

    Hey benurd, i am just wondering if you have any issues with your nexus 4? I had 3 replacements sent to me by t-mobile in 10 days and all devices were defective. Following the link to get the production date, i found that they were all 3 made in november. Some say devices made in december had fewer issues, if any. thanks!

  3. William-Robert Kent Cousert

    01/18/2013 at 1:14 pm

    It’s January 18th and the Nexus 4 still isn’t available on Google Play. What’s going on?

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