Motorola and Google are selling more smartphones than ever before
The smartphone market is exceptionally competitive, especially in North America, and the shipments reached 39 million units in the first quarter of 2022, up 3.7% year on year. Motorola and Google have both managed to increase their market share thanks to their newly released and ever-popular smartphones, such as the Google Pixel 6 series.
Canalys posted a new report revealing that the North American smartphones market grew 4%, despite concerns about increasing inflation prices and the chip shortage. The biggest growth can be seen by Apple with 19%, achieving an impressive 51% market share. The report claims this is due to the strong demand for the iPhone 13 series. Despite some reports claiming that theiPhone SE 2022 is not doing so well, it helps Apple increase its market share and sell more devices across a broader range of price tags.
Samsung grew 1% and took 27% market share, thanks to the improved Samsung Galaxy S and A series of devices covering a wide range of price points and audiences. Lenovo also managed to call the first quarter a success with its 10% market share with Motorola branded devices, and it reported a growth of 56%. The company has slowly converted previous LG users into Motorola users with its affordable mid-range devices, and Motorola also has an excellent carrier presence across the nation.
Google also made it onto the list with a 3% market share, and a growth of 380%. The software giant entered the hardware field with its Google Pixel-branded devices some time ago, and it is only just starting to build out its ecosystem, including other Pixel-branded products such as the Google Pixel 6 Series, the Pixel 7, and Pixel 7 Pro, the Pixel 6A, Google Pixel Buds earbuds, Pixel Chromebook, Google Pixel Watch, and soon the Google Pixel Tablet.
The future of smartphone market share remains unclear due to the current high inflation prices and the constant supply shortages. Some analysts claim that it could last for years, driving up the cost of living, decreasing the demand for expensive devices, and further increasing the prices.
“High inflation places an enormous amount of pressure on carriers in North America as rate increases will be necessary,” said Lynch. “Heavy discounting and high trade-in values are being used to lure in and retain customers for the region’s biggest telcos, easing pressure on the high-end smartphone market. Supply will remain a key bottleneck for the top vendors in the upcoming quarter, but North America will continue to be a priority and is likely to maintain healthy supply levels. The North American market is well placed to avoid any significant volatility in shipments despite the uncertain outlook of its economy.”
Will Google become a top-3 manufacturer in North America?
The recent growth is all thanks to the successful Google Pixel 6 and the Pixel 6 Pro smartphones. Google managed to increase its marketing budget and make the devices available at more retailers and carriers than ever before, but it’s still not widely available in other key markets – which isn’t expected to change given the current shortages.
If Google wants to take on Apple, it should offer better and more premium services. Service-wise, the company has always been a software company, and it provides several products ranging from Gmail, Maps, Search, Video (YouTube), Stadia (Cloud Gaming), and a bunch more that can compete and even take on everyone else in the industry. But, when it comes to the hardware and physical products ecosystem, the company still lacks quality control due to its buggy smartphones.
If Google wants to be taken seriously in the hardware department, then it needs to make some serious investments to iron out the currently existing issues, and release devices without any major flaws. Having a slow fingerprint sensor for months, various display issues, slow Wi-Fi performance, and many others isn’t exactly a premium experience, and it needs to step up its game. That being said, Google has learned from its previous mistakes, and it’s now investing more than ever before, and as a result, it’s created its first-ever smartphone chipset, the Google Tensor SoC.
While the chip is far from class-leading, it’s a good and solid start that the company can improve on in future iterations. The Pixel 7 series is going to launch in the fall of 2022, and we expect them to arrive with the Google Tensor 2nd generation chip, offering major improvements, stability, and performance upgrades.
Motorola needs to get back to the basics
This might sound controversial; after all, the company is managing to continuously report growth and eat up LG’s remaining market share to increase its own. What’s not to love?
Motorola has been making some excellent low-end, and mid-range devices in the past, and it even returned to the flagship market with more premium devices, such as the Motorola Edge Plus 2022. However, it’s not as successful as its more affordable lineup.
The company has been doing an excellent job at becoming available and an easily recommendable brand with cheap prices and solid hardware, but gone are the days of smooth and fast software updates, and phones being fun. Remember the Moto Maker and the Moto Mods? They never really took off, but they were fun and stood out in a market of boring phones that all looked the same.
Ever since Lenovo acquired Motorola, the company has gone downhill on the software path, and it’s no longer a brand that we can associate with quick Android updates and security patches. You may argue that it’s not necessary for devices in the $200-400 range, but security is more important than ever, and having new features is a nice touch. If the phones run near-stock Android, we’d expect to see at least a single OS update and the continued rollout of security patches every month. Samsung has been doing a fantastic job in this department, and we’d love to see Motorola get back to what made it so popular five to eight years ago.
Google Pixel 6
The Google Pixel 6 is the more compact and affordable variant from the new flagship series. It features most of the same features, and it comes with the same primary and ultrawide camera as the Pixel 6 Pro.
Google Pixel 6 Pro
The Pixel 6 Pro is the more premium Pixel flagship. It has a 50MP main camera, a telephoto with 4x optical zoom, and a useful ultrawide sensor. It supports 120Hz and both the Pixel 6 and Pro come with 5 years of support by Google.
Motorola Edge Plus (2022)
The new Edge Plus from Motorola is the high-end flagship smartphone from the company. It features Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 processor, OLED display, a triple camera setup with 50MP main and ultra-wide cameras, and much more. Check out all the deals on the device using the links given below.
