Google Has Sold Almost 40 Million Pixel Smartphones Since 2016

Lost amid all the product announcements and AI advances that it unveiled at the Made by Google ’23 event last week was a vague pronouncement by Google senior vice president Rick Osterloh that caught my attention. “Pixel is the fastest-growing smartphone brand in our top markets, and the only one that grew in units sold year-over-year,” he said. Onscreen, the fine print noted that this information came from IDC and that the latter statistic was “among phones with [a price of] $300+.”

I missed this at the time, but as that event was starting last week, IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo tweeted some additional details about this accomplishment, noting that Pixel “sales have been growing double digits in the last years, with total sales reaching nearly 40 million units since its launch in 2016.” The specific total sales were 37.9 million units between 2016 and 2023, according to a graphic he provided with the tweet. (Thanks to 9to5Google for the heads-up.)

That sounds great. But remember that double-digit growth can be as low as 10 percent and that Pixel sales are still tiny. For example, we got a lot more information about total Pixel sales last year, also from IDC, and a bit of math shows us that Pixel sales in the past 12 months were just over 10 million units: By October 2022, Google had sold 27.6 million units combined since 2016.

10 million units sounds like a lot, but Apple and Samsung each sell well over 200 million units each year now. And even looking just at Pixel, there are some caveats to consider. For example, the Pixel 3 lineup is still Google’s best-seller overall, with about 9 million units sold between 2018 and 2019. And the past 12 months were unusual because Google had more phone models to sell than ever before, with the Pixel 6a, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 7a, and Pixel Fold all vying for customers.

But any success is still a success. And hopefully, Google can keep the momentum going.