Nexus 4 may not come to Virgin Mobile, Optus and Vodafone in Australia

Droids down under in Australia just received support for Google Play Movies yesterday, after getting access to Google Play magazines a few days before that. The recently announced Nexus 4 is also expected to be available for purchase in Oz, from the Google Play Store starting November 13th.

While the unlocked flavor of Google’s latest device can be purchased by folks in Australia, those who preferred to go with a carrier-plan based option, did not really have any clarity on when the Nexus 4 would be made available, and through which carrier. LG Electronics had announced yesterday that further info on offline availability, and by that we inferred they were referring to carrier-based availability would be available in late November.

However, over the course of the day, it appears that Virgin Mobile has confirmed that they did not have any plans to stock either the Nexus 4 or the Nexus 7 3G. Optus, one of the major Australian carriers, when approached, stated that they did not have any details to confirm that they would be carrying Nexus devices at this point. Now that looks bleak.

To add to the misery of those hoping to get the Nexus 4 on a carrier-subsidized plan, Vodafone responded to a Twitter query on the Nexus 4, that they have decided against stocking it, and recommended an  outright purchase. There hasn’t been any official statement from Vodafone yet, but for now, with three of three carriers who have been asked, not really giving any positive indications, the outlook does not look very bright.

In any case, with the pricing for the Nexus 4 already at rock bottom levels (Considering the cutting edge hardware as well as Android 4.2), sales of unlocked handsets may not necessarily get affected too much. With more details awaited from LG towards the end of November, we should get a clearer picture of what to expect from Australian carriers.

1 Comment

  1. There has to be a way to get the phone off the net and associate it to my virgin mobile account…

    If not I’m leaving Virgin and switching to another carrier… I want the N4.

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