In Q2, the Pixel expanded its reach again - this time by 230% year to year, according to that same firm's research.Īnd lest you think that's part of a broader market-wide growth explosion, get this: Smartphone shipments overall were down by 6% in that same time period as a result of "economic challenges, high inflation, and poor seasonal demand," as Canalys observed. This past May, for instance, market analysis firm Canalys found Google's Pixel line had grown its North American market share by a hefty 380% from the first quarter of 2021 to the first quarter of this year. In North America, specifically, Google was the third most successful premium smartphone player, according to the company's data - coming in from nowhere and outperforming everyone other than Apple and Samsung for that 12-month period.Ī separate analysis from that same time found that Google's Pixel brand was the "fastest-growing major smartphone brand" across the entire US market for that period - outperforming everyone, including Apple and Samsung, in growth for that time.įor deeper context yet, US smartphone shipments on the whole dropped by 23 percent during that same window, while Google's Pixel shipments shot up by a whopping 43 percent. Its freshly compiled data indicates that Google broke into the elite club of top five "premium smartphone brands" for the first time in both Western Europe and North America when looking at sales numbers throughout all of 2018. The most recent such report came along just a couple weeks ago from analysis firm Counterpoint. It just started at a very small point.Īs I last observed in 2019, Google's share of the smartphone market has actually been growing for quite a while now - all while the overall smartphone market has mostly been shrinking. There's no way around it: Google's Pixel phones still represent a tiny droplet in the vast ocean of soggy smartphone sales.īut, critically, that droplet is expanding exponentially. The Google Pixel reach realityįirst, let's look at some cold, hard numbers. And while there's little question that Pixel sales have grown more slowly than Google almost certainly wanted over the past six years, there's also much more to the story than most of the internet's rapidly released write-offs would lead you to believe. This is very first innings for us." Google’s metric of success for Pixel won’t be whether it picks up significant market share, but whether it can garner customer satisfaction and form retail and carrier partnerships that Google can leverage for years to come. Osterloh knows that "We certainly aren’t going to have enormous volumes out of this product. From that same 2016 interview, at the time of the first Pixel phone's launch: They feature not just a "pure" version of Google's base Android software, as was typically the case with Nexus products, but rather a highly customized and specific software setup that's overflowing with exclusive original features - features that are meant to provide a more helpful and all-around pleasant user experience and that don't appear anywhere else.īut perhaps most significantly, Pixel phones are absolutely positioned to sell - at least, in theory. Pixel phones are made by Google, with completely original designs. But the Pixel brand was deliberately designed to be a pivot away from the Nexus strategy. With that context in mind, it's easy to see why outsiders continue to have that same impression with Pixels. Meanwhile, Nexus kind of trundled along at the same small scale." "All the partners in the phone manufacturing space took it and built great products on top of it. "The idea was to show everyone how it should be done," says Brian Rakowski, VP of product management for Android. They were barely marketed, aimed mostly at Android enthusiasts and developers, and treated as reference devices designed both to guide Google's own development of Android and to show other device-makers what Android could do.įrom a 2016 Verge interview with Android executives: With rare exception, Nexus phones were never truly meant for mainstream awareness or consumption. The Nexus phones were usually based on existing products but then customized to Google's specifications and shipped with Google's software instead of the usual manufacturer-meddled mess. Google had up until that point been focused on a product line known as Nexus - a mishmash smorgasbord of phones and other gadgets made by other manufacturers. To fully understand Google's goals with its Pixel phones, we need to start with a quick trip back in time to when the Pixel brand first broke cover.
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