According to a new report, Google’s growing number of Pixel owners are also the most likely to consider switching to other brands on their next upgrade, creating a problem for brand loyalty.
Statista reports this past week as a part of its Global Consumer Survey that a whopping 57% of Google Pixel owners surveyed said they are very likely to switch to a different smartphone brand at the “next possible occasion.” A mere 26% were “very unlikely” to switch.
It’s a staggering brand loyalty problem for the Pixel series, especially when looking at Samsung and Apple’s figures which both only saw 34% of those surveyed likely to switch to another brand. Apple, of course, had the highest brand loyalty with 49% of customers “very unlikely” to switch, and 44% of Samsung owners saying the same.
Of course, it’s worth looking into the methodology of this survey, which took place over the course of the past year in the United States. In the survey, a mere 442 Pixel owners were surveyed, where the survey asked for input from nearly 3,000 Galaxy owners and over 4,400 iPhone owners. But, at the same time, this makes sense from a marketshare perspective, given Google’s share is drastically lower than that of Apple and Samsung.
In any case, it does show there’s a clear brand loyalty problem for Google here.
9to5Google’s Take
The unfortunate truth here is that, really, it’s not hard to see why Pixel owners might consider other brands when the time comes to upgrade, ignoring any brand loyalty.
Top comment by jimmy cychowski
Not me, I very happy with my Pixel 7 Pro, it's been great, I have had every major Pixel release since the first one, I've dabbled with Samsungs, but I always miss that Pixel software features set, and little things that I just enjoy much more than using any other Smartphone.
Aside from the obvious “blue bubble” social politics that have so much control over the US smartphone market that Google is so heavily targeting, there are a lot of reasons why those who took a chance on Pixel might jump ship.
Looking at older Pixels, like the Pixel 4 and Pixel 5 that are starting to fall out of update support, it’s hard to defend Google’s decision to effectively kill off these devices when Samsung has extended its longer support timelines to devices released in the same years.
But beyond that, there are the practical reasons why someone might avoid a second round with Pixel. Google’s phones are notorious at this point for some of the most random and unexpected software bugs that can have big impacts – just this week a rogue Google app update decimated battery life for many, but has since been fixed. There’s also the fact that with the Pixel 6 series, Google shipped a phone that had some serious deficiencies with heat management and cellular connectivity. These are problems the company pushed, and partially succeeded in solving on the next generation, but it’s also totally fair that consumers would be a bit put off if they had to deal with those problems.
Google’s reputation in building smartphones is certainly getting better with every new generation, but the company’s failure to keep things up to par with the likes of Samsung and Apple over time is clearly hurting in the long run.
More on Google Pixel:
- Review: Pixel 7a affordably delivers on every promise of the Pixel series
- Source: Google planning to launch Pixel Watch 2 with Pixel 8
- Pixel 7a vs. Pixel 7: Blurred lines on a budget [Video]
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