Google’s brand-new foldable smartphone, the Pixel Fold, may not be making its debut in Canada. Although this is a surprising move by the company and may upset many customers, Google decided to focus on specific markets where it knows it will see success in sales. According to Google, the phone is expected to launch only in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan and will be priced at $1799.
In the press note, the company stated that the Pixel Fold would join the family of Pixel phones, buds, tablets, and watches engineered by Google. According to Jitesh Ubrani, the research manager for IDC’s worldwide device tracker, Canada was excluded from this launch because the near-term outlook for foldable phones, in general, is not as optimistic as in other markets.
Ubrani is based in Canada and claims that the country, like many others, is dealing with large-scale economic issues, which have weakened the Canadian dollar significantly, making devices much more expensive. Additionally, the 2022 shipments for foldable phones in Canada were relatively high. With the expanding phone lifecycle, fewer people would purchase phones. Therefore by excluding Canada, Google is merely working through regulatory issues to determine the best go-to-market strategy.
When asked about this decision during a media roundtable, Google’s product manager, George Hwang, stated that they had made this difficult decision to focus on a select few markets to ensure they got everything right. Therefore, they chose the US, UK, Germany, and Japan. These markets, according to Ubrani, have an appetite for premium devices and will sell a much more significant amount of the Pixel Fold. Anshel Sag, a senior analyst, added to this discussion by agreeing that these markets have shown to be the most promising for Google devices.
This is not a new strategy, as Samsung did the same in 2019 when it launched the first Galaxy Fold. The company stated at that time that the luxury phone would only be introduced in select markets, and Canada was not one of them.
Many also assume that leaving out Canada could be that it fears being affected by Samsung Fold’s sales. In fact, the Pixel Fold is not trying to replace Samsung but is actually trying to do better by creating a more premium device that improves the user experience overall.
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Bethany Wilson 
