Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
One of America's richest and best-known companies has sold its Pixel brand of smartphones for nearly a decade. Pixel devices are on par with the quality and prices of higher-end Apple and Samsung phones, but hardly anyone buys them.
Despite praise from professional gadget reviewers and happy Pixel owners - including me - about 96 percent of American phone buyers pick something other than a Pixel. That pattern is likely to hold after Google unveils new models.
If you didn't know that Google sells its own smartphone, you can see the problem.
The well-regarded but unpopular Pixel says a lot about why our phone habits are so hard to break - and what we could be missing.
• Car competition vs. smartphone predictability
About half a dozen automakers sell a healthy number of new vehicles in the United States, according to data from Cox Automotive. And while new and used car prices have increased a lot in recent years, we generally believe that companies with strong rivals are pushed to make better products at more competitive prices.
With a close contest for your money, Cox data show that even the two top-selling automakers in the United States, General Motors and Toyota, combined for only 31 percent of new-vehicle sales last year.
By comparison, about 75 percent of American phone buyers picked either an Apple or a Samsung device, according to market research firm IDC. For years, every other phone maker has been fighting for scraps.
"It's not even a fair fight," said Nabila Popal, an IDC senior research director.
Apple didn't respond to a request for comment. Samsung declined to comment.
Both brands make reliable phones at many price levels, and they may provide all the choices that you need.
If the automotive market were this dominated by GM and Toyota, we might wonder what we're missing. If there were more smartphone companies with a realistic shot to win you over, Popal said, Americans would "get more premium features at cheaper price points."
She pointed out that in many other countries, including in some parts of Europe, Chinese brands such as Vivo, Oppo and Xiaomi sell phones at typically lower prices than top-tier Apple or Samsung devices, but with high-end options including batteries that can run for days between charges, high-quality cameras, or novel folding and flipping shapes.
• Why hasn't Google's Pixel caught on?
Selden Deemer is among the few Americans who opted for a Pixel smartphone.
The retired university librarian and avid photographer praised the "absolutely amazing" image quality of the Pixel phones he has owned for years and the editing options in the Google Photos app. He's a fan, too, of the version of Android software that Google uses for Pixel devices. (Google didn't respond to my request for an interview.)
Popal said that Google has two major challenges in its effort to win over more people like Deemer. First, many consumers don't know about Pixel or why they should buy one. And America's biggest service providers haven't really made a concerted effort to sell Pixels.
Most Americans buy a phone from AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon. The brands those companies decide to stock - and the trade-in offers or other discounts they pitch - make a big difference in swaying which smartphone you buy.
There are some signs the big cellphone providers are starting to push Pixels with more gusto. The average discounts on Pixels are as generous or more than those offered on comparable Samsung phones, according to an analysis by the price-comparison site Navi.
AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon still tend to dangle the best discounts if you're buying an iPhone, Navi told me. (The analysis only examined options for people switching phone carriers and looking to trade in a relatively new phone.)
Pixel phones do seem to be gaining steam. Sort of. Five years ago, only about 1 percent of American phone buyers picked a Pixel. Now it's 4 percent.
(COMMENT, BELOW)