I've said it once and I'll stay it again: this phone is a steal. It has comparable specs to phones that cost twice as much so it's not really a surprise that it's selling so well but like someperson said, there's no telling how many units were actually sold. I have a feeling that the entire Nexus line will do quite well this year.
What matters in this case is the number of units that were available (now sold) - it's likely a small amount on purpose, since selling out fast is great for publicity.
Though unlike Nexus 7, the Nexus 4 pricing is competitive to the US price - the AUD is worth more than the USD and the Australian price is only $50 more (most of which is accounted by the 10% GST tax.)
Australia still has to pay a little more than the US than justified by tax differences, but it's better than the huge price differences it normally has.
Not sure what the tax difference would take the amount up to, but it was probably priced to just be "near" a round number (with the obligatory 99 suffix).
Also, unless you're planning to peg the price to currency fluctuations, may as well round up to cover that.
Well if they sold out, wouldn't the units available and sold be the same? Unless they are selling units that don't exist yet. Apple does this too, they say "We sold out in x hours" and neglect to say how many units they sold. That info does come out later after the headline wears off.
You are missing the point. If they sold out of 10 units, that is not impressive. If they sold out of 10,000 units, that is pretty amazing for Australia.
Apple usually doesn't say they are sold out, you can just infer it from the availibility dates on the website (e.g. if the store says shipping in three to four weeks). If a product is successful (and all their big products everyone cares about have been, so they have always been reporting numbers on iPhones and iPads) they will usually report a nice round number after the opening weekend (like "We sold three million in three days!").
They will say when they are supply constrained, but that's during their quarterly calls when being supply constrained is properly interpreted as a more negative than positive thing.
For a brief period of time the 16gb model showed as being available, but a very buggy shopping cart meant that it was nigh on impossible to actually checkout.
Now it's showing as "coming soon" again.
Edit: And now I've just received the email saying that it's available... oh no it's not.
Google checkout/wallet is possibly the worst product Google ever made (excluding products that were eventually killed). If you've ever used it as a seller you've probably come across multiple issues that are never solved despite many people desperately trying to contact google (mostly failing to contact any human being, let alone one that would forward issues to developers) about them. It's no surprise it couldn't handle shit. The team left Google a few months ago too (there were some stories here about it I think).
This was indeed frustrating; in my attempt to buy a Nexus 10 this morning I inadvertently bought two - I definitely only saw one purchase confirmation screen, though. I'd have expected better from Google.
I need to investigate the Wallet API (and whether the Play Store is using it) but I'm pretty sure it was the Google Wallet checkout popup that actually kicked the bucket. The Play Store site was really snappy, actually.
The order that visibly went through was redirected to the full Wallet site. I say "visibly" cause apparently one of the popup ones went through as well. Oh, well, I'm sure one of my friends would appreciate it.
I'm sure this is pointing out the obvious, but it's 'sold' from a Dublin address due to the corporation tax breaks. It's effectively one massive tax dodge - google / amazon / dell etc put all sales through Irish shell companies, really does boil my blood!
It's not a significant tax dodge in this particular case though. VAT is paid to the country of the consumer, not to the country of the retailer. Any corporate tax on the profits of the sale id going to be tiny in comparison.
The fact that on one individual sale the damage is minimal is pretty irrelevant - you don't get to pick and choose what you pay tax on.
Google in the UK had sales of £2.5bn. It has a group wide profit margin of 33% so let's assume profits of £800m and yet paid £3.4m in corporation tax (as opposed to the £220m you'd expect at standard corporation tax rates).
As someone who does pay tax at the full rate in the UK, I'd quite like it if they did too.
Yes, it's immoral and in an ideal world would not be legal. But the decision to sell the Nexus 4 from Ireland clearly has nothing to do with dodging taxes, so it's ridiculous to use the Nexus 4 as an example of this kind of operation. The fact of the matter is that for a Nexus 4 sold to the UK there's about 40GBP of VAT being paid to the UK, and about 0EUR of actual profit for Ireland to tax (or for the Bahamas, or whatever the domicile of the appropriate sleazy holding company is).
No, they're selling it there because that's where they're set up. Just because you have a product you don't expect to directly make money on you don't go and set up a new operation to sell it - the fact you're not making money means that you're going to use whatever you've already got in place rather than incur new costs.
But the fact that this product isn't profitable doesn't excuse it. We're always told that Android drives the Google ecosystem which drives profits.
This phone in of itself may not be profitable but it drives other Google services which are and on which tax is avoided.
You don't seem to understand VAT. Consumers pay VAT on goods and services ( some exceptions ). Without further financial activity, these receipts are simply forwarded and paid to HMRC.
For purchases that included a VAT component, ( and that is or should be all orders ), the amount paid to VAT is deducted. If the balance is positive, the entity pays HMRC. If the balance is negative ( for instance, when making a loss on expenditures vs income ), HMRC pays you.
In other words, it's entirely possible that HMRC pays Google. Customers, ( or those not VAT registered ) always pay the tax.
I understand VAT just fine. Meanwhile you don't seem to be responding to anything that I actually wrote.
The exact specifics of VAT accounting don't matter to the question of whether selling Nexus 4 to the UK from Ireland is sleazy tax optimization or not. I think it clearly isn't, and have argued why not. If you disagree, could you perhaps address that point rather than bicker about the exact VAT semantics?
I'm not trying to bicker. I'm merely pointing out that VAT is completely irrelevant to tax on profits. It needs to be left out of the conversation as it never forms a liability for a VAT registered entity. It's only connection to ethics as far as I can see is to the question of whether a VAT registered entity should arrange accounts so that a continuing pattern of running a loss account leads to payments from HMRC instead of the other way around. But of course in practice this makes no difference. Some other VAT registered entity will pay it instead.
This is important to clarify. There seems to be an idea here and elsewhere that VAT forms part of a companies liability. It doesn't.
As to arranging a lower tax rate on what are liabilities, then I will agree in the main. Ethics as pertaining to corporations are codified. They are a little subtle, but generally they resolve around the best interests of the company. This doesn't imply, as I'm sure you know, that the only consideration is profit. Shareholders are or should be also interested in larger concepts of value.
The fact is that the tax code in the UK provides for decisions that lead to the, in my view, somewhat hypocritical criticisms from these companies interrogators. It is grandstanding on well established and ordinary mechanisms of accounting. It ignores the history of the British isles in allowing tax havens like Jersey to prosper, and completely discounts the philanthropic activities of some of these companies, in particular Google.
Sorry if you thought I was having a go. It wasn't my intention.
It's probably worth mentioning that in Australia, off contract phone are far more popular than they are in the US. We have many competitive pre-paid options, so buying a phone outright often is cheaper, or better value than going on a plan. The Nexus 4 may have found the perfect market for skipping carriers.
I would disagree. LTE is rolling out pretty rapidly, and there are quite a few places where 3G is useless, even on Telstra. Melbourne CBD has been a long running issue, so has parts of Perth and Sydney, apparently.
DC-HSDPA is great but the lack of uplink speed upgrade to go with it seems to be an issue, IMO. I've seen a few situations where I can pull a few megabits/s on 3G but now the uplink is seriously congested, so interactive applications become very poor.
But if you buy this phone now, and you can reasonably expect there to be a new version out in a years time with LTE support... right about the kind of time that you start to get good LTE coverage. It's the same story in the UK. There is only a few trial areas with LTE at the moment.
Ugh, I need to have the company's purchasing department buy a Nexus 4 for our dev team, but if it's going to sell out so quickly, I'm virtually guaranteed to be out of luck :(.
Not to sound cocky but No developer with self respect should be working for a company that wouldn't let developers buy THE DEVELOPMENT phone if developers are working on smartphones.
Got the mail that the Nexus 4 is available at 9:39am, by then it was already sold out for 20mins (Germany)... a bit unlucky, today being the only day this week where i had an unskippable meeting at 9.
This launch was a big fail and especially if the shortage was planned, this will backfire at Google. You cant announce a big product launch (at a bargaining price) and then just have a few thousand units available (it cant be more, i was quite succesful in the Touchpad fire sales last year which lasted longer). Additionally the 9am launch (on a working day) wasnt even announced beforehand and google should have known (at least from E-Mail notification subscriptions) that demand outstrips supply by far.
Anyway, hope they can handle my scraping traffic now, waiting for new ones ;).
I am for the screen as well. But like others; I really need a keyboard dock. Why don't all big tablet makers learn from the Transformer? Or is it only geeks who like that thing? But for the resolution the Nexus 10 is too good to not buy.
Given the number of pogo pins, they must be for both power & USB, so a keyboard dock is quite possible. (If it is just power, the dock could use bluetooth.
If the Nexus 10 is successful, somebody will make a keyboard dock for it. I'm almost confident enough of that to buy a Nexus 10 today and use my bluetooth keyboard for the time being.
While I'm confident somebody will make a keyboard dock, I'm not as confident that it will be a GOOD dock. So I'm going to wait for a bit.
Well yeah, that's my reasoning as well. I really like the transformer dock but it can be better. When I dock I want to go for some serious work so it doesn't have to be THAT portable (like the transformer). I hope it's successful or that a transformer-like comes with the same resolution.
I am.. Hopefully, get the 32GB, if I can purchase it during the window. I wish, however, if they offered an unlocked 3G model too(I can live without LTE). I will have to use freedompop for now.
I want it for the screen. I really want a keyboard dock with it (like the Asus Transformer) and am going to look into designing one or having one designed and having it printed at something like shapeways if they don't bring one to retail.
The thought of putting Ubuntu on that, with that screen, is much too much to pass up.
I agree. If I could get a keyboard dock for the Nexus 10 I'd buy it in an instant. Ever since I got my transformer I have decided the KB dock is a prereq for my buying a tablet.
I got an order in for a 16GB Nexus 4 after about 5-10 minutes of shopping cart and payment errors on the Play Store. My order's timestamp is 11:50am. Looks like it's all sold out in the US... before the stated 12pm PST release time. I think Google pissed a lot of people off today.
Can anybody recommend another Android device that's competitive in terms of quality? I've been holding off buying in hopes of geting the Nexus 4, but the prospect of holding off again and perhaps having the same experience as today isn't very appealing.
It's weird how with all the adulation over the GSIII, no one dings the screen. The quality hit is pretty noticeable in an AT&T store. I wandered back and forth from iPhone, Lumia, etc, and had also checked out the RAZR HD earlier that day -- which has the same subpar sparkle-grains display.
This is one of the cynical things that makes me wonder if sites ever actually have time to review new devices. Their "one job" should be to see through the marketing-speak ("Super AMOLED", "IPS", "retina display") and tell us what A) looks better, and B) uses less power at a given nits.
I've had an iPhone 4 for 2 years now, and can't really stomach going to one of those poorer screens. The Optimus G is beautiful, and that's why I'm going to snag a Nexus.
I have a buddy who has an international Galaxy Note II, and for what it's worth, I think the screen looks magnificent compared to the screen of the Nexus 7, which isn't half bad (my phone is a Nexus S 4G, so the comparison is moot).
You're right, the Note II in store was pretty good, but with its size the density was slightly less pleasant. I think that'll be more of a personal preference thing.
The Nexus is super attractive, except for the glaring lack of LTE. I'm currently on a SIII rooted with AOKP Jelly Bean ROM and I'm loving it. I can't believe how fast it is, not to mentioned the high level of customization available. The Samsung ROM was just too bloated and felt sluggish. Jelly Bean has definitely won me over!
Why does it matter how well the GS3 sells? Just get the device you like most. I'm not buying anything but Nexus from now on, and I don't care how flashy they make the new phones. The Nexus experience and the 2 years upgrades, plus the very low price make it worth a lot more to me.
Well I waited and didn't even see the screen flicker to available! Apparently it was released 20 minutes early and sold out within 10 minutes in Canada... although I was constantly checking. Looks like I'll be waiting for the next batch!
