Google sold 3.9 million Pixel phones in 2017

In the 16 months since its initial release in October 2016, Google’s Pixel family of phones has earned plenty of acclaim and scrutiny, but not very many sales. The latest update on Pixel sales comes from IDC’s Francisco Jeronimo, who notes that Google shipped 3.9 million Pixel and Pixel 2 devices in 2017. That’s no more than a rounding error when set against the global smartphone market that numbers 1.5 billion units, and it’s also less than a typical week’s worth of iPhone sales for Apple.

Though still comparatively tiny, Google’s Pixel sales are at least heading in the right direction. According to Jeronimo, the rate of sales has doubled in 2017, and the most recent data from Kantar Worldpanel agrees with this, indicating that Google’s share of the US phone market has gone up from 1.8 percent to 2.8 percent. Admittedly, these are still small figures increasing in small fragments — rather like watching the proliferation rate of the latest Android update, it requires a lot of patience — but Google’s commitment to being a hardware maker has never been greater. Having recently acquired HTC’s smartphone design team for $1.1 billion, Google will be hoping to build on the strength of its world-best Pixel camera technology by creating more appealing devices in 2018 and beyond.