Google’s Pixel phones still largely make up a small portion of the smartphone market, but slowly the devices are growing in popularity. A new report details that Google Pixel phones continue to grow in Japan, and have been taking market share from the iPhone.
In the Japanese market, Apple’s iPhones have been dominant for quite some time, holding over 50% of the market much like they do in the US market. But that number is now dropping, as Google Pixel phones are growing in the region.
Top comment by Pete McCormick
Stolen comment from Reddit:
"This is helped immensely by Japanese government's new law a few years ago where they have limited the amount of payback $ that the telcos can give to the customers for purchasing a phone.
When iPhone was initially released, Softbank (one of the major telcos in Japan) have decided to practically give away new iPhones in order to grab market share as quickly as possible. This worked. Softbank grew extremely quickly, and other telcos had to follow suit to keep up with Softbank's rapidly rising market share.
So, since best and the newest iPhones could be gotten for practically free in Japan, iPhone naturally became the de facto market leader there for many years.
Recently, Japanese government put a stop to it (the law mentioned above), so telcos could no longer give away iPhones like they did before.
This had an immediate result, last year, the best selling iPhone in Japan was iPhone 13, not iPhone 14. This also had a positive effect on Android phones.
So I guess Google saw the writing on the wall and decided to go all in with marketing in Japan, and it shows it's been working."
Bloomberg reports, citing data from Counterpoint Research, that Google Pixel now makes up 12% of the smartphone market in Japan as of Q2 2023, up from a mere 2% in Q2 2021. Meanwhile, Apple’s iPhone market share in the same time period dropped from 58% down to 46%.
In Q1, it was reported that Japan had become the biggest market for Google Pixel phones, and that was when Pixels only made up 9% of the market.
Notably, Pixel isn’t the only Android brand seeing growth. Sharp saw a jump from 8% to 11%, and Sony went from 5% to 6%. Samsung held its line at 6%, while Oppo actually slipped from 6% to 5%.
Much of the success for Google apparently rests on Pixel A-Series devices, including Pixel 6a and Pixel 7a. Tom Kang, an analyst for Counterpoint, said that the “iPhone is suffering from a weak yen and Google is benefiting from it.”
More on Google Pixel:
- Google Pixel was the only smartphone brand that didn’t shrink in North America in Q2
- Pixel 7a repair parts now available on iFixit
- Google leaked a bunch of new Pixel 8 series pictures in an ad [Gallery]
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