When you have many profitable businesses you don’t need to make money on every single one of them.
Pixel is a showcase device and mostly targeted to convert iOS users to android users. This is a win for google, not to get marketshare from existing android users that already use their services.
Other than that, I think 7 and 8 series sales hold 50% of the whole pixel sales so they finally got some traction in the market.
But the OHA (Open Handset Alliance 1) is dead since 2011
Hmm, I assumed it was still alive, but its need may have been very much diminished. Seems it is not needed anymore ?
Clearly, but based on this logic also Microsoft would still develope mobile Windows and sell it on Nokia phones, isn’t it? And Microsoft has more capital than Alphabet. Do you think that the shareholders like expensive “showcases”?
But the difference is that pixel is selling and only seeing exponential growth in sales, MS WP didn’t.
And the billions invested to marketing were wasted.
Still the sales are neglectable in comparison with Top 10 players. And they even do not sell officially in China !!! And on the forum some people say, is also not available in some European countries. Kind of expensive for a showcase, cause in that business nobody has years to wait. They are not able to close the gap between Gemini and ClosedAI (sorry OpenAI), fur sure they don’t believe they will become a big player in the smartphone industry.
You are forgetting that the top 9 out of 10 players are using their OS and services.
Pixel is a retention device for devs and mod enthusiasts, and also a conversion device for the number one player and the only competitor, Apple.
Revenue is not the only KPI that is relevant if you are dominating the market.
Gotta say, I never saw any kind of marketing in relation to WinMobile 10, here in the UK.
It seemed to me as though they were being made to wind it down, by buying in the Lumia branch of Nokia and self-destructing it.
And now our favourite duo of apple and google have no competition at all to worry about, practically-speaking.
Understood, thank you!
In other words, they are in the Jesus business! 
User conversion, retention and new user acquisition is the most important part in any business. Positive revenue will follow with the proper strategy.
Is it the first time that you hear a company is losing money (millions or billions) and it is expected to be profitable in X amount of years?
If yes, you would be surprised if you check let’s say Spotify.
Alphabet is not anymore a startup company, and they cannot afford to lose money. Now they have institutional investors profit oriented with decision votes. I do not understand their strategy with the HW, cause they were not successful in the past also. But if they want to be successful I would expect to have chinese market in view. Anyway, I don’t care about google, they can fail/succeed…their problem.
Well then, I can tell you that
But if you want to think there there is a conspiracy behind it or that they do gods work, feel free.
I have nothing to add on that
I’ll just leave this here. Anyone thinking they know how internet-based companies make money, and believing users matter to them should read it: