iPhone vs Google Pixel, The Black Friday Weekend Sales Battle

By Precious Gem de Peralta
Google Pixel phones
Google Pixel has enjoyed a 112 percent increase in device activations during the Black Friday weekend compared to the iPhone 7's 13 percent. iPhoneDigital / Flickr

There were a number of great smartphones Black Friday weekend deals. Among them are on flagship Android and iOS devices. A recent data from an analytics firm revealed that the Google Pixel enjoyed the most success with sales far from what Apple’s iPhone got. Meanwhile, Samsung’s Galaxy S7 settled in the middle of the pack.

Android devices reigned in the past Black Friday weekend, according to Localytics. Particularly, the recently released Google Pixel powered by the latest Android Nougat mobile OS has experienced 112 percent increase in device activations. This is a good news for Google since it has intensely promoting their new smartphone.

Apparently, 46 percent of the Google Pixel’s sales were through Verizon. The carrier offered a huge discount to customers. The device was sold $400 less than its original price. The remaining 54 percent purchase were from the tech company itself or other retailers. It seemed that the device is exceeding sale expectations. A big boost might be caused by good reviews from critics.

As far as the performance of iOS devices are concerned, the 9.7-inch iPad Pro and iPad mini 2 performed better than the iPhone 7. The sales of the Apple tablets increased by 24 and 19 percent, respectively. That’s compared to only 13 percent of iPhone 7 activations. There were not enough deals on the latest Apple flagship smartphone as with its competitions. The company’s biggest rival Samsung fared well despite the bad publicity of its ill-fated Galaxy Note 7. A big factor is the Galaxy S7 sales that rose to 36 percent.

According to BGR, the data does not indicate that Google Pixel has actually surpassed the iPhone 7 in total sales. It even called out Fortune for declaring that the Pixel phone has “trounced” Apple’s iPhone. Though Pixel did outperform the iPhone 7 during the Black Friday weekend, it still does not come close to the estimated 75 million iPhone sales by Dec. 31.

The Google Pixel currently has around 6 million to 9 million sales. It was also pointed out that there are several factors as to why many actually went for this Android device. Google benefited from the global recall of the Galaxy Note 7. Furthermore, it also helped that Verizon had set up an amazing deal on the smartphone that the iPhone 7 did not have. 9to5Mac reported that Localytics’ data is “referring to total increase during the shopping weekend”. It does not necessary mean that Google Pixel also had high sales in the weekends prior.

The firm collected data from over 37,000 apps and services that use the Localytics SDK. This accounts to 2.7 billion devices total and 120 billion data points per month.

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