During a developer conference in May, Google announced its plan to launch a budget smartphone called the Google Pixel 6a. The expected price of this phone is around $449 and so, we can assume that Google has decided to make some compromises regarding the features and the overall performance of this phone when compared to its other premium or flagship models. But this might be a gamble made by Google because there is a slight possibility that it won’t capture much attention of people when compared to higher-end models like the Google Pixel 6 or the Pixel 6 Pro.
In March, Counterpoint research published a list of the top 10 best-selling smartphones in the market for the year 2021. That list is dominated by iPhones (which includes 7 different iPhones) and Apple’s iPhone 12 tops the list. The surprising aspect of this list is that you will find very few budget phones.
In this list, you will find the Samsung Galaxy A12 in the sixth position and this phone is priced at less than $200. But there is one more budget phone on that list, which is the iPhone SE 2020 and Google hopes that it is very own budget smartphone Pixel 6a competes with this iPhone. Apart from these two phones which can be considered budget models, the rest of the phones on that list are all flagship ones. So, we can understand that most people prefer to buy premium smartphones. One more point to note is that you certainly won’t find any Pixel phones among the top 10 for market share.
Google Pixel 6a: Google announcement
As per Google’s announcement, the Pixel 6a will go on sale starting on July 28, with preorders beginning one week in advance. Since this is a budget smartphone, we can predict that its main competitors would be the Galaxy A53 and the iPhone SE (2022).
When compared to the Pixel 5a which has a 16MP ultra-wide rear camera, the Pixel 6a comes with an ultra-wide rear camera of just 12MP. However, it is expected that the Tensor chip which powers the Pixel 6a would be a plus point. Other camera features of the Pixel 6a include a low-light photo mode, a magic eraser and face unblur. All these features could be very helpful if you are a content creator. With the Tensor chip, the Pixel 6a has a good advantage over the Galaxy A53, which is one of its competitors available at a similar price range. The other competitor (iPhone SE 2022) also comes with a slight disadvantage because of the absence of an important camera feature called Night mode.
With some compromises and some plus points, Google’s primary challenge would be to attract more and more people to buy the Pixel 6a, which is expected to be available for a reasonable price. Google’s other challenge would be competing with both Apple and Samsung which are the top two players in the smartphone market in the US. Let’s see what happens because Google has what it takes to compete against top brands in the market.
