A new report from Wave7 says the Pixel 6 won’t cut it on carrier shelves
According to a new report from Wave7, the Pixel 6 series is not selling well in carrier stores. As detailed by PCMag (the report doesn’t appear to have been released publicly), Google took to a potent “spiff” promotion to incentivize Verizon’s salespeople to sell the phone, and a Wave7 rep blamed the phone’s flaws and performance issues on a limiting factor.
Wave7’s report is based on a survey of US carrier salespeople. According to PCMag’s Sascha Segan, Google had to use “spiffs,” or internal promotions, to increase sales commissions and rebates to increase Google Pixel 6 sales on Verizon. It’s a common practice among smartphone makers to incentivize salespeople to sell more make or model than another (since they’ll get a personal gain), but Google reportedly sells more than other smartphone companies offer be high.
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Verizon seems to be if only Carriers with any interest in the Pixel lineup, and at least one sales rep told Wave7 that when those phones sold out, they sold Pixels to customers looking for the Galaxy S22 — with the Pixel 6 as a replacement for another, the report said. A popular device, not something that can be marketed and sold by itself (ouch).
While the Pixel 6 series reportedly set a quarterly sales record for Google, analytics firm Counterpoint later reported that Google’s sales rose 56% year over year through the fourth quarter of 2021. The market may be consolidating and exiting after LG’s launch, but the company’s recent reports alternately show that Google is third among North American premium ($400+) smartphone brands as of 2021, behind Apple and Samsung (considering their respective controlled market share, which is a small win), and a fourth or sixth overall ranking in North America and the U.S., respectively, in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Ranking of global smartphone brands in the premium ($400+) segment by region in 2021, image via Counterpoint.
Google hasn’t shared any precise sales metrics for the Pixel 6 series, but the company did have issues keeping the Pixel 6 series in stock at launch, with strong initial demand. In October, a separate report said that Google hopes to double its smartphone sales in 2021, nearly doubling its initial orders for the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro compared to the total number produced for all of 2020 ( from 3.7 million to 7 million).
The Pixel 6’s reputation for bugs and update issues has affected its reputation among smartphone enthusiasts — who are more likely to frequently upgrade their phones and buy directly from the manufacturer or directly from the manufacturer, in a seemingly They’re unlikely to be mentioned in the carrier-centric report — but the report says that impression may be creeping into the mainstream. A representative in the Wave7 survey claimed that the phone was only bought by “die-hard” Pixel fans, and customers were apparently aware of the issues.
If the Pixel 6’s problems end up spilling over to the upcoming Pixel 6a, that reputation could extend to the acclaimed Pixel a series as well. Given that many of the issues could be related to Google’s in-house Tensor chipset, and the Pixel 6a will share that hardware, the company could be in for some trouble when it launches later this year.
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