Hey, remember data? Well, it had a good run but… it’s dead now.
Writing for The Street, Bret Kenwell muses aloud “Did Google’s Pixel Beat Apple’s iPhone?” (Tip o’ the antlers to Philip Speicher.)
Ah! Good question! Turns out that the answer to that question is actually in the piece you wrote: No.
You should just look down a few paragraphs. Or not write link-baiting headlines. Seems like there are at least a couple of options here.
Google’s Pixel device crushed the iPhone on activation rates between Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
That is actually the exact opposite of what the data shows, but you can’t make a subtitle omelette without breaking a few truth eggs and getting the yolk all over the gas range and, oh, God, now it’s on your hands and the phone is ringing…
Does Pixel beat iPhone? Sort of.
Or sort of… not.
While Alphabet’s Pixel phone may have seen very impressive activation numbers, the overall volume did not surpass Apple’s iPhone 7 volume over the Black Friday to Cyber Monday stretch.
So. The iPhone beat the Pixel. The opposite of what everything up until now implies.
Oh, wait! is this piece meant to be a Choose Your Own Adventure book? What an exciting twist!
The Google Pixel saw activations climb a whopping 112% compared to the previous four weekends, according to Localytics. Meanwhile, the iPhone 7 saw activation growth of just 13%.
Activation growth rates are predicated on original activation numbers. If original activation numbers are low… you see how this works.
One could argue the iPhone was introduced earlier this year (September) while the Pixel came out in October.
Yes! One could argue that! Since, you know, it’s exactly what happened.
But that excuse seems somewhat thin given that the period between Black Friday and Cyber Monday saw such record spending amounts.
Which Apple took more of, at least in part because there were deeper discounts for the Pixel than the iPhone (tip o’ the antlers to @mylestaylor). What is so hard about this?
Does this bode poorly for Apple? Perhaps.
Actually selling more phones than Google is bad news for Apple.
Welp.
There’s that.
(CORRECTION 12/6/2016: An earlier version of this piece misattributed the story to MarketWatch. The Macalope regrets the error.)