The LG-built Google Nexus 4 known to be never available! but even with that, the Nexus 4 have already reached the millionth, according to the owners of the smartphones. The members on the so famous XDA Developer forum have worked a way out to make an educated guess on the smartphone shipments on the basis of its IMEI number.
The XDA Developer post, put up on the forum late yesterday, indicates that the 999,998th Nexus 4, a black device apparently sold in Turkey (although Google Play does not currently offer the device in that market), was produced on February 5th. The post notes:
Ladies and gentleman, we just reached the millionth device!
(of course just judging by serial number, i.e. minus gaps)
ATURBK 302KPSL999998 20130205 TURKEY
Which means, IMEI prefix 35391805* is now officially complete and the next one will be started.
LG and Google have managed to sell over a million units in a little over two months and with all the supply shortages, the figure seems decent. Google has declined to comment on the latest Nexus 4 sales, but the internet giants seem to be quite happy
with the performance of the handset.
Using the production estimates in the XDA developer forum thread, members have also estimated Nexus 4 production run totals by month — which appear to show production ramping up considerably in January. The estimates break down as follows:
- October: 70,000
- November: 90,000
- Dec: 210,000
- January: 550,000+
Here’s how Nexus 4 owners are crowdsourcing their IMEI numbers to generate the estimate:
Take your IMEI number and put it at the end of this link, and the LG site will be show up with a long string of characters like “LGE960 ACAGBK 212KPHG188745 20121206
GLOBAL/GLOBAL N N” If you break this string apart, you get :
LGE960 = phone model
A = ?
CA = Country where the device was sold. (Others include ‘US’ for the U.S., ‘HK’ for Hong Kong, ‘AU’ for Australia and so on.)
G = Storage (G = 16GB, 8 = 8GB)
BK = Color
2 = Production year (2012)
12 = Production Month (December)
K = Production Country (Korea)
PHG = ?
188745 = The line or production number, showing that phone was the 188,745th device made.
2012121206 = The production date in YYYYMMDD format
