It’s not exactly a secret that Google’s sales for the Pixel 8 series were quite good. We don’t have the exact numbers, but based on everything we’ve seen, they’ve been the best-selling Pixel phones to date. An interesting report surfaced from IDC recently, revealing that Google Pixel phone shipments grew immensely in one specific market.
Google Pixel phone shipments grew a lot in one specific market, by 527% YoY
The market in question is Japan, and the shipments grew 527% year-over-year (YoY), believe it or not. Google is actually the third-largest smartphone manufacturer in Japan, as it sits above Samsung. Well, at least it did at the time this report was compiled.
Do note that the report is new, but it’s for Q4 2023. If you check out the list below, you’ll see what I’m talking about. Google is currently the third-placed smartphone manufacturer in Japan.
The company holds 10.7% of the market, while in the same period in 2022, it was at only 1.5%. It was not even in the top 5 companies, not even close. That’s a growth of 527%, which is stunning.
Apple holds over half of the smartphone market in Japan
Apple is leading the market in Japan with a 51.9% market share. It’s followed by Sharp with 10.9%, so not a single company is close to Apple in Japan. Google is third, while Samsung is fourth-placed with 6.3% of the market. Kyocera and Lenovo round up the top 5 (well, 6) list with 5.4% of the market. All the other companies hold 9.4% of the market.
As you can see, Apple alone has over half of the smartphone market in Japan. The thing is, only Google has seen growth out of the top 5 companies here. All the others have seen a decline compared to the same period in 2022.
Apple declined by 6%, Sharp by 9%, Samsung by a staggering 39%, Kyocera Group by 9%, and Lenovo by 56%. It’s quite interesting to see Google fly so high, this is the first time we’re seeing it.