At the start of the Nexus program, the idea behind it was to create a relatively affordable Android smartphone that offered users a stock/vanilla Android experience. This is versus the more expensive flagships from the likes of Samsung, LG, HTC, and so on that came with highly-tweaked versions of Android, and not necessarily for the better.
However, over the years we’ve seen how Google has started to increase the price of their Google-branded smartphones, where last year’s Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL were the most expensive of the entire series. Perhaps that wasn’t such a good idea after all, because Google’s CFO Ruth Porat has since acknowledged that despite launching the Pixel 3 lineup in 2018, the company has actually sold fewer Pixel phones compared to the previous year.
According to Porat, this was apparently due to “industry-wide pressure on high-end phones”, but she did not elaborate what that meant. Some have taken this as a form of admission that maybe Google’s decision to price the highest-end Pixel 3 XL smartphone close to $1,000 wasn’t the best idea.
That being said, Google is not alone in feeling this as Apple themselves have also found that the cheaper iPhone XR is actually outselling its higher-end siblings, despite it “compromising” on certain features. Could this be a sign that the Pixel 4 will be more reasonably priced? We suppose we’ll have to wait and see, but in the meantime, Google is expected to launch its budget-friendly Pixel 3a smartphones next week.
Maybe making $1000+ phones isn't such a great idea after all?
— Janko Roettgers (@jank0) April 29, 2019