Once again the Google Nexus 4 smartphone gets sold out in just a matter of hours in some countries.
In Australia at the moment, the Google Play Store shows the 16GB version as “shipping soon” after only 20 minutes of being on sale. But, if you don’t mind the smaller storage space (and not extendable by the way, since the phone doesn’t come with a MicroSD slot) you can still buy the 8GB version. If you still fancy getting your hands on the 16GB version and you are willing to pay extra, the good news is that you can get the phone through the retailer Harvey Norman stores starting the 1st of February as part of a mobile package or without contract for AUS$469.
In Europe, in France and Spain, both versions of the Nexus 4 are sold out the Google Play store showing the devices as “temporarily unavailable”. The UK store is also showing both models as “shipping soon”, with the devices scheduled to ship from one to two weeks after it becomes available, but the date when the store will be resupplied was not mentioned. In the UK the 8GB model costs £240 and the 16GB model costs £280, which compared to the other offerings is not something to laugh about. As of the time of writing, the German website seems to still have both models in stock.
This time around, it seems that the Play Store servers took the traffic load fairly ok. The only glitch that was reported this far, was that the webpage would change the availability of the phone several times a day. This was seen in the US Google Play. I would prefer looking at it as this being the struggle between the supply line and the huge demand for the phone. Of course, that has a slim chance of being the cause for this, but then again who knows.
But as far as issues with the website go, compared to the other times the phone was available, it’s a “walk” in the park (or a piece of “cake”, if you like). This might as well be because Google has added resources so that the store can withstand the load, or maybe because people have given up on the idea of buying the Nexus 4 and lost interest. For Google’s sake, let’s hope it was the first one.