With the hope that T-Mobile’s upcoming efforts to put the Nexus 4 into all of their retail stores will lead to a boost in availability, plenty of questions are being asked about just how many Nexus 4 units exist. Well, thanks to some sleuthing by some XDA Developer fans, we can gather around 370-400 hundred thousand units exist.

Even as Google and LG remain tight-lipped on both sales and inventory numbers, the Android community knows no bounds and has been able to figure out those details. So how did the 400k number come to pass? Let’s start with the IMEI (International Mobile Station Equipment Identity Number) which each cellular phones uses as an individual identification number.

Using the IMEI number and this link, LG will give you the IMEI number back followed by a long string of characters that looks something like this: LGE960 ACAGBK 212KPHG188745 20121206 GLOBAL/GLOBAL N N. Now, let’s break that down:

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 = ?

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

With the original XDA thread filling up with Nexus 4 owners running their own devices, the determination has been made that LG manufactured around 70,000 devices in October; 90,000 in November and 210,000 in December. Google of course declined to comment on any numbers.

With Google indirectly pointing fingers at LG for inventory troubles, it seems that both companies were conservative with their launch needs. Google’s UK managing director Dan Cobley even took to Google+ to apologize for the lack of communication between both companies. Hopefully T-Mobile’s efforts to put the Nexus into every retail store will lead to a larger inventory supply and allow everyone who wants this Android bad-boy to get their hands on one.

TechCrunch via XDA Developers