How Did Google Pixel Prices Develop?

On May 7, Google revealed their newest mid-range smartphone Pixel 8a, which will be officially available today to coincide with the company's annual developer conference I/O. With a price point of $499, it comes at half the cost of last year's Pixel 8 Pro released in October 2023. As our chart shows, the A series has been on an upward price trajectory since issuing its first model in 2019 - with one exception.

While the Pixel 3a released in May 2019 ran consumers $399, the Pixel 4a entering the market in August 2020 was available for $349. It's bigger cousin, the Pixel 4a 5G, which featured a more powerful battery and, most notably, a 5G antenna required to connect to 5G networks, cost $499 at launch. With the introduction of the Pixel Pro series in 2021, prices for the regular Pixel model dropped significantly, even though the tech company bumped the asking price for both the regular and the Pro version of the Pixel by $100 last year.

Just how much money Google's parent company Alphabet is generating with smart tech like wearables, tablets and smartphones is unclear. In its most recent annual report, the segment Google subscriptions, platforms and devices contributed 11 percent to Alphabet's revenue of $307 billion. Looking at global smartphone shipments reported by IDC, Google Pixel phones had a market share of less than nine percent in the first quarter of 2024. Most shipped smartphones were sold by Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi, representing a combined market share of 52.2 percent.