Google seeks to improve its place among smartphones with the new Pixel 7

Google confirmed its interest in improving its share of the smartphone market with the new Pixel 7, which enters the competitive personal electronics sector, where it has traditionally been a minor player.

The device had its launch this week in Brooklyn, where representatives from the Mountain View, California-based company highlighted some of its top-notch features, like being able to mute background noise on calls.

First introduced in 2016, the Pixel was a latecomer to the mobile phone trend, arriving almost a decade after Apple’s iPhone and seven years after Samsung’s Galaxy model, products that now dominate the market.

In 2020, global shipments of Google’s phone reached just 2.7 million, against nearly 200 million units for Apple and Samsung models.

These low sales figures are due in part to the limited availability of Google’s phone, with the Pixel 5 on sale in fewer than 10 countries as the tech giant focused its investment on software rather than its own hardware.

While Google’s smartphones are comparable in quality to best-selling brands, the product “often lacked Google’s backing” in terms of marketing, said Runar Bjørhovde, a market research analyst at Canalys.

Google, instead, focused on giving strength to its Android operating system, which it launched in 2008 and was included in more than 80% of smartphones sold in the first half of 2022, according to the company Canalys.

Maurice Klaehne, of the firm Counterpoint Research, assures that “Google certainly has the capacity and resources to become a major player in smartphones, but that is not Pixel’s strategy”, noting that the growth of Android continues to be the Google’s main goal.

But “selling more Pixel devices may mean taking share from other Android players, and this may defeat the purpose of Pixel,” the expert said.

Bjørhovde stressed that, with the latest version of this phone, Google has changed a bit, launching a product that is compatible with “wearables” (personal use devices worn on clothing or the body, ndlr) such as hearing aids and others produced by the company.

AI Wonders

The previous version, the Pixel 6, was the first to use the Tensor processor developed by Google to enable more artificial intelligence and machine learning.

The Pixel 7 has a second generation of Tensor, the G2, which can make blurry photos clearer, remove distracting objects from photos, and remove background noise on calls.

The updated system can also translate languages ​​in real time, including idioms, and convey more nuanced images of different skin types.

At the launch event, Google Vice President Rick Osterloh said that this new product represents “years of development at Google, and a long-term investment in the Pixel portfolio.”

The company saw a sales boom, reaching 6.2 million Pixel units sold in 12 months, as of June 30, 2022, up 129% from the same period a year earlier, according to figures from Canalys.

This includes a doubling of market share in the US, where the Pixel only accounts for 2% of smartphone sales.

Priced at $599 in the US, the Pixel 7 positions itself as relatively affordable; there the latest versions of the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy cost around $800.

Google has been ramping up marketing for the Pixel 7 in partnership with the NBA professional basketball league and plans to distribute it in 17 countries, up from 13 markets in the previous version.

“Google has the potential to become a long-term player in the smartphone market,” Bjørhovde said. “However, it will depend on global scale and penetrating new markets to pull it off and create a profitable business that can last.”