Just when we thought all the turmoil around the delays with Nexus 4 stocks was about to come to an end, it starts getting worse. This could possibly be one of the worst handled launches (at least in terms of supply) in the history of the Nexus lineup.

After being out of stock for a while, the elusive LG Nexus 4 went back up on sale earlier this week on the Google Play Store, with an estimated 1-2 week fulfillment time frame for fresh orders. If you were able to place your order at that time, what else can we say but — Lucky You! Within a few hours of showing up back in stock, the shipping estimate had doubled to 3-4 weeks, and within 24 hours had quadrupled to 4-5 weeks!

Anxious buyers (prospective buyers rather) were flabbergasted with the steadily increasing fulfillment timeline every time they checked the page, and probably wondering if it was worth all the effort. They could just get it from a retail channel, albeit at a far higher price, but be done with the purchase and be rid of all the suspense and anxiety. Turns out that the current ship date for the device stands at 6-7 weeks as of today, making the wait more excruciatingly painful than it already was.

It is not very often that a consumer device, as inanimate as a mobile phone, causes this kind of a caught-between-the-devil-and-the-deep-sea situation in the consumer electronics market. Global marketplace eBay placed the Nexus 4 under a high-demand status category yesterday, and has already set restrictions on seller eligibility for listing the device.

All the frenzy only goes to show that Google has once again come up with an awesome genre-defining product. But who is to blame for this seriously mismanaged demand-supply gap? Did Google not have enough faith in the Nexus 4 so as to ensure that adequate supply was readied by LG well in time before launch? Or did LG not have faith in its own product to not have done the same?

We can question the logic and speculate all we want, but the fact remains that the Nexus 4 continues to be in short supply, and increasingly high demand. In a way, I am not surprised — this is a Nexus device after all. Anyways, if you haven’t ordered one yet, and that too before last week, it doesn’t look like you would be creating any New Year’s Eve Photo Spheres using a Nexus 4.

But if you do manage to score one to do that, do share your joy with us in comments below.

Via Droid-Life