Google has blamed LG for Nexus 4 shortages, and an LG spokesperson has said that production is proceeding as planned for its hard-to-find Nexus 4 handset, but Cathy Robin of LG France is telling a still slightly different story — at least for the French market. In an interview with Challenges, Robin said that the predictions Google had given LG France — based on previous Nexus sales — turned out to be lower than demand, causing a shortage. Now, she says production will ramp up, and that hopefully "market strain" will be gone by February. She also denies that the Nexus 4 was sold at a loss, though she did say LG and Google had reached an agreement on a "reasonable price."

Though it's tempting to assume the same faulty predictions happened in other countries — the phone sold out within minutes in the UK and is still out of stock in the US Play Store — Robin reports that estimated demand in France was much lower than elsewhere: "Predictions for the UK and Germany were ten times higher than for France," she says, "therefore we shipped a lot more to those markets than to France." Overall, though, she's still (rather politely) pointing the finger at Google, as well as giving potential Nexus 4 buyers a ray of hope.