Google Pixel

Google Pixel finally made up its own tiny little slice of active smartphones

Ben Schoon | Feb 11 2026 - 7:30 am PT

Google Pixel is undoubtedly a small player in the overall smartphone market, but it’s steadily growing and, thanks to a new report, we have a slightly better idea of how many Pixels there are out in the wild.

A report from Counterpoint Research breaks down the global share of active smartphones with Apple, of course, being the runaway leader. As our sister site 9to5Mac pointed out, nearly 1 in 4 active smartphones in the world are iPhones, at least as of 2025, or just shy of 25%. Samsung comes in second place, with just shy of 20% of the active smartphone market share, and both brands have over a billion active devices out on the market.

Counterpoint says:

Each of the eight leading smartphone OEMs had an active installed base exceeding 200 million devices in 2025, together accounting for over 80% of the global active installed base. Only Apple and Samsung have surpassed the one-billion active devices milestone, showing their ability to keep users engaged over time.

The list goes on to feature Xiaomi, Oppo/OnePlus, Vivo, Transsion brands, Huawei, Honor, Motorola, and Realme in that order. At the very bottom of the list, eleventh place, is Google Pixel, with maybe a whopping 1% of the total market, at least based on the chart shared. It could be less than that, though.

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That’s not exactly nothing, especially if we’re considering that 20% is already over a billion devices. At bare minimum, Google made up enough of a share that it’s no longer relegated to “Others” status, at least in this breakdown. After a decade in the game, that’s a big achievement on Google’s part.

Basically, Google just found its Paul Rudd “look at us” moment.

Anyway, let’s break out some “napkin math” here on this chart.

Counterpoint says that Honor is the latest brand to have crossed the 200 million active device figure, with “Motorola and realme” being “close to reaching this milestone.” From there, we can get a very rough idea of how many Pixels are being used today. Motorola is the one closest to Honor here, so if Motorola isn’t very far from 200 million, we can assume that Google Pixel is somewhere around 20-40 million range. We’re basing that on the chart itself, and the size of the Pixel share versus Motorola’s. Again, rough math at best, but it’s an idea. That might in the right ballpark, though, given that Google had sold around 30 million Pixel phones from 2016-2022, and has only grown in the time since, especially recently.