Google has sold ‘twice as many’ smartphones due to the arrival of Pixel 3a

Google sold twice as many smartphones in the second quarter of this year as in the comparable quarter last year. That’s due to the introduction of the cheaper Pixel 3a. It is not known how many devices are involved.

Google is not releasing sales figures for its smartphones, but when commenting on its quarterly results, CEO Sundar Pichai said Pixel sales have more than doubled from last year. He cites the appearance of the Pixel 3a in May as the cause.

The Pixel 3a and 3a XL are Google’s cheapest smartphones to date. In Germany, the basic model costs 399 euros and the larger version 479 euros. The higher positioned Pixel 3 and 3 XL had suggested retail prices of 849 and 949 euros at their release. Google does not officially sell its smartphones in the Benelux yet.

It is not clear how much revenue Google gets from hardware sales. The company categorizes hardware in the ‘other’ category, which consists of even more items. That segment had revenue of $6.2 billion in the quarter, an increase of nearly 40 percent from last year. Google derives the lion’s share of its revenue from advertising sales. That was $32.6 billion in the last quarter; an increase of 20 percent compared to the same quarter a year earlier.

In the Other Bets category, Google made a loss of nearly $1 billion. Under this heading, the company groups experimental departments and products such as its X Lab and Waymo that are working on self-driving cars. The loss was 35 percent higher than a year earlier.

Google’s parent company Alphabet achieved revenue of $38.9 billion in the quarter and made a profit of $ 9.4 billion. Last year’s profit was $3.2 billion in the same quarter, but that was because Google then wrote off $5 billion as a reservation for the billion-dollar fine imposed by the European Commission for abuse of power with Android.

Pixel 3A XL and Pixel 3A