It's official, many more lusting after the Nexus 4 will never get their hands on the Google handset this December, which the internet giant said is sold out for the holidays and will not ship until January, at the earliest, next year.

Attempts by Android fans to secure the 8GB model was greeted with this notice on Google's Play Store: "We are out of inventory. Please check back soon." And when it comes for the 16GB variant, buyers are advised that shipment can only be processed over the next five to six weeks.

Searches for possible available units online were generally met by notices of back orders but for the desperate, opportunistic eBay offerings await them, that is if they're willing to fork out as much as $700 for a handset that Google sells at a starting price of less than $300.

Computerworld blamed the problematic Google supply chain for the Nexus 4 retail hiccup, which only compounded the disastrous manner that Play Store has been handling the issue so far.

"Google's Play Store continues to show the Nexus 4 as being 'sold out' with no option to place an order or be notified when more units become available," Computerworld said in a report.

The Nexus 4 drought could last way into the last month of Q1 2013, according to ProductReviews.net, which would be the situation for those that were unable to place online orders, at least in the U.S. market.

For the lucky ones, they "are looking at around a 2-month wait before the smartphone delivers," the tech blog site said.

Yet the best effort seen from Google in remedying the situation was its Play Store at one time "randomly switching between showing the phone as available and showing it as coming soon," Computerworld complained.

This debacle seemed to prove that Google has a lot to learn from Apple in terms of efficient supply chain management, Phillip Elmer-Dewitt of Fortune said.

It was pity that the Nexus 4, which is the product of close collaboration between Google and LG, "has become an object lesson in how not to stage a roll-out in advance of the holidays," Mr Elmer-Dewitt said.

Despite encountering serious bumps in the Nexus 4 global push out, Google saw its shares value spiking by six per cent since the JellyBean-powered phone became commercially available in Nov 13, said a NASDAQ blog.

The stock kick-ups proved that the market and consumers responded positively with Google's decision to dip its fingers a little deeper on hardware business though crucial improvements remain wanting, analysts said.

With fewer issues attending the Nexus launch, the tech giant could have done much better in so short a time, they added.