The Pixel 3a helped Google double its smartphone sales

The Pixel 3a and 3a XL helped to double Google’s smartphone unit sales, according to company CEO Sundar Pichai.

Pichai shared the tidbit of information during Alphabet’s Q2 earnings call on Thursday.

“With the launch of Pixel 3a in May, overall Pixel unit sales in Q2 grew more than 2x year-over-year,” he said. “In addition to Verizon and the Google Store, we successfully expanded our distribution to T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular, Spectrum Mobile, and additional partners, which has greatly diversified our sales footprint in the US.”

Obviously, the fact the Pixel 3a was able to double Pixel sales is good news. Realistically, however, the company likely expected better than a 2x improvement when it was preparing to launch the Pixel 3a.

It’s important to emphasis: the Pixel 3a was both cheaper than the Pixel 2 (which is the phone Pichai is referring to when he talks about Q2 2018 smartphone sales) and more widely available. It also launched at a time when there wasn’t a lot of competition from other smartphone manufacturers. Taken together, those factors should have led to even better sales.

Part of the problem here is that Google doesn’t share individual unit sales. Instead, it reports smartphones sales as part of its “Other revenues” category, which also includes Play Store and Cloud revenue. In effect, the company’s accounting strategy allows it to soften how its smartphones are performing in the market behind generalizations.

Via: 9to5Google