Google hasn’t sold more than 10 million Pixels in one generation: IDC

The Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro have finally made it out into the world. At yesterday’s Pixel launch event, Google announced that the Pixel 6 series has been its fastest-selling handset line ever. While the company may be celebrating the growing success of its smartphone portfolio, newly released numbers from data analytics firm IDC paint Google as a very small fish in the Android pond.

Shared by Bloomberg’s Vlad Savov, who obtained the information from IDC, a graph shows that none of the Pixel series have sold more than 10 million units to date. That’s a very tiny number in the world of smartphones. OEMs like Samsung ship six times that number (sometimes more) in a single quarter. Savov also recently gave us a figure for the lifetime Pixel sales, which seemed meager at best, considering the hundreds of millions of phones other Android makers ship.

Another bit of information IDC supplied Savov is that customers prefer buying smaller Pixel phones over larger ones. “Whenever there have been two sizes, the smaller Pixel has sold better,” tweets Vlad. It’s unlikely this statistic exists because people prefer compact phones over larger ones. Our best guess is that folks opt for the smaller Pixel phones simply because they are less expensive.

Meanwhile, the graph above also contradicts Google’s claims about the Pixel 6 series being its fastest-selling line ever. The chart shows that the Pixel 3 lineup sold more in the first six months than the Pixel 6 duo. It’s unclear if the latter overtook the former after the first six months of going on sale, but the graphic clearly indicates that Google sold more third-gen Pixels than the 2021 flagships.

We’ll be reaching out to IDC for more clarification on these numbers.