Taking the "budget phone" route seems to have worked for Google as the overall Pixel unit sales in the second quarter (Q2) of 2019 grew more than twice year-on-year (YoY), the company's CEO Sundar Pichai told investors.
The Google CEO attributed the success of the Pixel line-up -- including Pixel 3A, which starts at $399 (Rs 40,000 in India) -- to an expanded distribution network.
Beating Wall Street expectations, Google's parent Alphabet posted a revenue of $38.9 billion and a profit of $9.9 billion in its second quarter earnings for 2019, The Verge reported on Thursday.
The tech giant has never broken out of concrete Pixel sales before, thus, making it difficult to know how many more units this increase involves.
"The twice YoY growth touted comes following a doubling of the phone line-up with mid-tier devices joining the flagship models.
"Pichai's last comments about Pixel came in October 2018 following a question by an analyst about why Google's phone line-up wasn't more successful. Cited reasons at the time included not enough product inventory, and the need for a better go-to-market strategy and retail availability," according to 9to5Google.com.
It’s interesting that Pichai refers to the 3A series being the saviour of Google’s phone business. Because compared to the US, where it’s seen as a mid-range phone for the price, in India the Pixel 3A series starts from Rs 40,000 which puts it in the premium category.
This is likely to have made sure that people who were keen on buying the Pixel 3A would have gone for devices from OnePlus or Samsung instead.
These stats have been revealed ahead of the Internet giant's annual "Made by Google" event, usually held in October, where it announces its next-generation Pixel devices, and this year’s Pixel 4 device has already been leaked by the company.
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