Google Doesn’t Need You to Buy Its Folding Phone

The company’s pricey new Pixel Fold probably won’t sell in huge numbers. But Google still wins.

When you saw the unveiling of the Pixel Fold during the I/O keynote yesterday, you probably took a long look at the $1,800 handset and said to yourself, “Cool, but I don’t really want to spend that much money on something so weird.”

Turns out, the urge to not buy a folding phone is a common one; folding devices have captured less than 2 percent of the smartphone market and still exist firmly within a niche. But that reluctance is actually fine for Google, since the company most likely does not expect the Pixel Fold to sell in huge numbers. Instead, Google expects the device to show its designers a whole lot about how people use folding phones, and how Android must adapt to best serve this growing market of handsets with multiple screens.

Anshel Sag, an analyst at the firm Moor Insights & Strategy, points to the high price of the Pixel Fold as a marker for Google’s intentions with the device. Its going rate is about the same as something like Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold4, and nearly $800 pricier than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Flip4. If Google really wanted to sell more units, it might have dropped the price enough to undercut Samsung’s larger foldable, or tried to entice folks who’ve never considered a folding phone because they don’t have a couple grand to spare. Priced as it is, the Pixel Fold cannot be expected to become the next big hit. It’s instead meant to be a vessel on which Google can perfect its foldable software future.

“They have to build hardware to be able to understand how that software will be used,” Sag says. “Most of the issues with foldables have been resolved, with the exception of software. Google needs to improve the experience and, more importantly, enable developers to make the most of foldables as a form factor.”

For comparison, consider Google’s Pixel Watch, the Android-powered wearable that was recently released into an already mature wrist computer market dominated by Apple, Samsung, and Garmin. It was years late to the starting line and emerged as a smooth and beautiful device that was nevertheless underpowered and buggy. The Pixel Watch has still sold reasonably well, though nowhere close to the competition. So why bother making it at all? Well, because there is a whole ecosystem of software for Wear OS devices that Google knows it needs to be on top of. And because it makes both the hardware and the software, Google can use the Pixel Watch to experiment with new interactions, apps, and experiences.

Building a proprietary folding device once again gives Google total control of the hardware and software for a new class of gadget. On its own foldable phone, the company can better tinker with things like multitasking, screen switching, or app behaviors specific to larger screens. The company doesn’t need to sell millions of units to learn how these things should work. It needs to sell just enough Pixel Folds to get an idea of how people are using it in the wild.

“It’s very much a first-generation product,” Sag says. “There are some unique capabilities we won’t see in anything else, but this will be a low volume device.”

Cleaner Slate

The Fold could also be a way to revamp an older form factor in Google’s wide-ranging lineup: tablets. Android tablets have languished in the shadow of Apple’s iPad for years now. Neither consumers nor Google itself seem certain of how an Android tablet is supposed to fit into peoples’ lives. Google is pitching its newly announced Pixel Tablet as a casual device meant for controlling a smart home and consuming entertainment and not as a productive or creative workhorse. To underscore this strategy, the table comes with a charging dock that has a speaker built in; docking the tablet turns it into a photo frame that doubles as a controller for the smart home.

“One of the things they realize is tablets don't really leave the home all that often,” says Jitesh Ubrani, a research manager at the tech analyst firm IDC.

Google could be using insights from the Fold’s large display to spruce up the way apps work on a tablet that stays in your lap. Apps meant to work on a device where you constantly fold, unfold, and spin the screen have to be dynamic enough to match those changes. The Fold could be the testing ground for an ecosystem of apps that are more adaptive and responsive to these actions, seamlessly spinning and scaling to different orientations.

Of course, Google also sees each new product as a playground for its artificial intelligence efforts. Sag points out that many of the company's services are thinly veiled vessels for machine learning algorithms that track your movements, study your behaviors, and collect your data. During yesterday’s I/O keynote, Google executives spent 80 minutes on the topic of generative AI before they even got to the announcements about Android devices. 

But when they did, those announcements were given a sprinkling of AI pizzazz. Android phones are getting AI-generated wallpaper images, AI-powered photo editing tools, and messaging apps that can send AI-assisted texts. Google is sticking AI inside every mobile device for every context. The Pixel Fold and the Pixel Tablet, as odd as they are, will only help Google better learn how the new types of interactions the devices enable should fit into our lives.

Google Doesn’t Need You to Buy Its Folding Phone

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