Pixel 3a Helped Google Double Pixel Sales in Q2 2019: CEO Sundar Pichai

Google's jump into the mid-range smartphone segment with the Pixel 3a launch is seemingly paying off for the company. During Alphabet's Q2 earnings call on Thursday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed that Pixel 3a phones have helped the company double the overall Pixel unit sales in Q2 year-over-year. Google parent Alphabet announced its overall Q2 profits tripled year-over-year to $9.9 billion (roughly Rs. 68,400 crores) while revenues increased 19 percent to $38.9 billion (roughly Rs. 2,68,000 crores).

“With the launch of Pixel 3a in May, overall Pixel unit sales in Q2 grew more than 2x year-over-year," Pichai said in the earnings call. “In addition to Verizon and the Google Store, we successfully expanded our distribution to T-Mobile, Sprint, US Cellular, Spectrum Mobile, and additional partners which has greatly diversified our sales footprint in the US,” he added.

The Google Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL were introduced in May this year at the Google I/O developer conference and went on the sale the same month. As Google doesn't share any actual numbers about the Pixel sales, we don't know how many units the company was previously selling or is now selling.

Google declares the Pixel revenues as a part of Google's Other revenues and those were up 40 percent year-over-year in the last quarter.

“Other revenues for Google were $6.2 billion (roughly Rs. 42,800 crores), up 40 percent year-over-year, fuelled by Cloud with an ongoing strong contribution from Play,” said Ruth Porat, Chief Financial Officer, Alphabet, during the call.

Among other Alphabet properties, Sundar Pichai revealed that YouTube channels with over one million subscribers grew by 75 percent year-over-year in the second quarter. Porat added that video streaming service continues to be the second-biggest contributor to Alphabet's revenue growth.