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Play Store Downloads Show Google Pixel Sales Limited To 1 Million Units (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the nothing-to-gloat-about dept.

While Google has yet to release official sales numbers for its flagship Google Pixel smartphone, a Play Store app may shed some light on roughly how many units are in circulation. The Pixel Launcher, which is installed by default on the Pixel and Pixel XL, just crossed into the "1,000,000-5,000,000" install tier, leading us to assume that Google has finally sold 1,000,000 Google Pixel units. Ars Technica notes that "the Pixel is seen as Google's answer to the iPhone, but considering Apple sells 40 to 50 million iPhones in a quarter, Google has some catching up to do." From the report: This calculation is complicated by the fact that Google Play doesn't show exact install numbers; it shows installs in "tiers" like "100,000-500,000." So most of the time, we won't have an exact Pixel sales number -- except when the Pixel Launcher crosses from one download tier to another. So guess what just happened? The Pixel Launcher just crossed into the "1,000,000-5,000,000" install tier (you can see some third-party tracking sites, like AppBrain, still have it listed at 500,000). So for this one moment in history, eight months after launch, we can say Google finally sold a million Pixel phones. The Play Store device targeting ensures no one other than Pixel owners can download the Pixel Launcher, and the install count doesn't include sideloading. The most popular sideloading site, APKMirror, has more than 1.3 million downloads on just a single version of the Pixel Launcher, so we know that sideloaders actually outnumber legitimate Pixel Launcher users. There are some statistically insignificant root shenanigans you could pull to download the Pixel Launcher from the Play Store on a non-Pixel device, but there is no way the number of sold Pixels is higher than 1 million units at this point in time.

4 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Seen? by markdavis · · Score: 4, Interesting

    >"Ars Technica notes that "the Pixel is seen as Google's answer to the iPhone, but considering Apple sells 40 to 50 million iPhones in a quarter, Google has some catching up to do."

    Seen by whom? It is just a phone, one of many Android phones. Add up all the Android phones and it dwarfs the number of iPhones. What are they trying to say, that selling a million Pixel phones is somehow a failure? Yeesh, you can make statistics say anything...

    1. Re:Seen? by kupan787 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Seen by whom? It is just a phone, one of many Android phones. Add up all the Android phones and it dwarfs the number of iPhones. What are they trying to say, that selling a million Pixel phones is somehow a failure? Yeesh, you can make statistics say anything...

      I think comparing phone to phone is a good metric. We are not trying to compare ecosystems (iOS vs Android, Mac vs PC, etc). If you don't like the Pixel to iPhone comparison, how about Pixel to Galaxy 8? Or Pixel to G6? Selling 1 million units is a lot like Lumia numbers. Not good by any stretch. I wouldn't expect Google to keep this going much longer, kind of like how they cancel most of their hardware endeavors (think Motorola purchase, Nexus Q, etc)...

    2. Re:Seen? by swillden · · Score: 4, Informative

      What are they trying to say, that selling a million Pixel phones is somehow a failure?

      FWIW, the number announced in the recent earnings call was 2.6M devices. I don't know what the download count of the Pixel Launcher on the Play Store means, but it clearly doesn't correlate with devices sold, because Pixel devices don't need to download the Pixel Launcher; it's pre-installed. Upgrades, maybe? But I don't think upgrades count as downloads. Even if they did, if the launcher is very infrequently updated and devices typically leave the factory with the latest version, only the earliest-sold devices would need to have upgraded.

      I'm not sure what that number actually means, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean what Ars thinks it means.

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  2. Re:If I switch, I figure it will be to a Pixel/Nex by lucm · · Score: 4, Informative

    Google has a bad history of not sticking it out with a product line if the first few iterations don't sell well.

    Google either sticks with unpolished products (such as Google for work, now called G Suite for some reason, which has barely evolved over the last decade) or breaks things that used to work well so they can promote other stuff; case in point, the Chrome/Chromecast integration which now requires the Google Home android app to access many features (like changing wifii). They always do this shit like when they forced everyone on Google+.

    I don't trust them, plain and simple.

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    lucm, indeed.