How Did the Google Pixel 7 Phone and Pixel Watch Launch Compare with the iPhone 14?

Could Google possibly create more excitement with its new smartphone than Apple did with the iPhone 14? We might not even ask the question if not for the fading enthusiasm for the new iPhone, as reflected in web traffic to the shopping and buying pages on apple.com. Still, although Google has been generating buzz for its launch of new devices on Thursday, Apple is a tough competitor.

Updated October 10, 2022, with initial numbers on launch day traffic.

Key takeaways 

• On launch day for the Pixel 7 phones and Pixel Watch, traffic to store.google.com surged to 3.2 million visits, according to Similarweb estimates. The store is Google’s direct-to-consumer store for multiple consumer devices, but that launch traffic doesn’t match what Apple’s online store attracted on launch day for any of its last three phones. It’s also 1 million fewer visits than the site got when the Pixel 6 launched.
• On the other hand, iPhone 14 enthusiasm seems to be cooling. In the first few days after its release, the iPhone 14 generated more interest (as reflected by traffic to its product pages) than the iPhone 13 had. But now that we have statistics for most of a month, post-launch, interest seems to be fading.
• In the first 25 days since the launch of the iPhone 14, its product pages attracted 34.6 million visits compared to 34.7 million for last year’s iPhone 13 launch – and 44.1 million for the iPhone 12 in 2020. Apple reportedly backed off on plans to increase iPhone production targets because of less-than-expected demand.

The Google Store and the Pixel 6

The statistics we’re citing for Google versus Apple aren’t exactly comparable. The two companies go to market differently, and we’re accounting for all the other sales channels for either Google or Apple devices. Also, we’re showing below traffic for the entire Google Store (which sells other gadgets, such as Nest smart home devices) in comparison to specific segments of Apple’s website related to its iPhone models.

But even though our 3.2 million-visit Pixel 7 / Pixel Watch launch day total for the Google Store includes both web and mobile traffic, whereas the website segment count for the iPhone product pages is limited to desktop visits, the iPhone stats still win.

The chart below shows the initial surge of traffic at the time of the Pixel 7 launch and the introduction of the Pixel Watch.

Update on the iPhone 14

At first, the iPhone 14 seemed to be driving more visits to the Apple website than the iPhone 13 had – albeit not as much as for the popular iPhone 12. That initial surge of interest seems to have faded, however.

As a caveat, the numbers shared here are estimates subject to a margin of error, particularly on a daily basis.

The numbers we can be more confident of are the cumulative daily totals:

Most of a month post-launch, iPhone 14 now seems to be trailing even the relatively lackluster web traffic performance of the iPhone 13.

Could that represent an opening for Google? If so, it hasn’t materialized yet.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.

Image: 2 phones in a race cartoon by the Dall-E AI image generator

by David F. Carr

David covers social media, digital advertising, and generative AI. With a background in web trends since the 1990s, he’s also the author of "Social Collaboration for Dummies".