Pixel 6 series sales reportedly low among U.S. carriers

A new report by a private research firm (Wave7) suggests that sales at U.S. carriers for the Pixel 6 series and the iPhone SE have stagnated despite high kickbacks being offered to salespeople to try and sell them. Said report is not public, but was provided exclusively to PCMag, which offered some interesting tidbits from it.

Wave7 is basing this information on surveys done with salespeople working at U.S. carrier stores. According to Wave7, Reps reported little to no interest in the Pixel line by customers unless they were “diehard” Pixel fans, attributing this to the wave of bugs and performance issues that plagued the Pixel 6 devices since their release.

Adding insult to injury, the report also adds that Google has resorted to offering higher-than-normal kickbacks to salespeople at Verizon, known as “spiffs,” to incentivize sales — a normal practice in the industry. One Rep even said that he’d gone as far as trying to sell Pixels to customers who came in looking for Galaxy S22 models whenever that device was sold out.

This is all very surprising information considering that earlier this year, the Pixel 6 series was directly attributed to helping Google set a quarterly sales record, cementing it as Google’s best-selling phone ever. Also contradicting this information is analyst firm Counterpoint, which reported that Google’s sales were up 56% year-over-year as of Q4 2021, thrusting Google onto the #3 spot in global smartphone OEM rankings — behind Apple and Samsung.

In Q4, we set an all time quarterly sales record for Pixel. This came in spite of an extremely challenging supply chain environment.

Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet

While Google’s smartphones traditionally have been mostly sold via the Google Store, in the U.S., regular consumers mostly depend on their carriers when it comes time to upgrade to a new phone. Since Google doesn’t provide specific sales numbers, it becomes very hard to determine where the disconnect is. The fact that this report is not publicly available and whose data is based on “what the reps are saying” gives me pause when considering this information as a nail in Google’s coffin.

Even though I have been quite vocal about my own discontent with the Pixel 6 bugs and delayed updates, I remain optimistic about the future of the Pixel line and Google’s new SoC. The upcoming release of the budget Pixel 6a will further give Google a chance to cement the Pixel name onto the public’s consciousness and provide carriers with an excellent phone that they can easily sell. Now let’s just hope that Google gets all the bugs and kinks worked out in time.