Google still has a long way to go before its Pixel smartphones can hit figures that high-end smartphones from the likes of Samsung always do but it’s seeing good progress. Latest data from market tracker IDC reveals that the company shipped 3.9 million units of Pixel smartphones in 2017. It registered a nice surge in sales over the previous year even though the total number of shipments is far below what some of Xiaomi’s mid-range handsets can even bring in.
While he didn’t provide any concrete figures, Google CEO Sundar Pichai recently confirmed during the company’s quarterly earnings call that Google has seen its device shipments more than double year-over-year.
IDC Research Director Francisco Jeronimo tweeted that Google shipped 3.9 million units of the Pixel and Pixel 2 combined in 2017. The original Pixel may have contributed significantly to this figure as well and to the claim of unit shipments doubling than the previous year because the original Pixel was launched in October 2016 and it continued to sell well into 2017. Google launched the Pixel 2 in October last year.
Even though Jeronimo notes that Pixel smartphones have only claimed “a tiny portion of the smartphone market,” it goes without saying that Google has seen some success with its hardware efforts. It’s unclear, though, how many of these 3.9 million units were actually sold to end customers.
The company is now expected to come up with additional mobile devices that can help it effectively compete in this crowded marketplace. Don’t expect a new Pixel handset before the fall, though.
Filed in . Read more about Google Pixel and Google Pixel 2.