Despite all the hype surrounding its camera and the impressive Night Sight mode, Google still has not managed to sell a lot of Pixel 3 units. Alphabet’s CFO Ruth Porat in an earnings call said that due to industry-wide pressure on high-end phones, Google sold fewer Pixels last quarter compared to a year ago.

Porat blamed “some of the recent pressures in the premium smartphone market” for the sub-par Pixel sales. It is clear that she is talking about the increased competition from newer flagships from Samsung and Huawei.

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The poor Pixel 3 sales are not surprising despite its impressive rear camera. The Pixel 3 series is riddled with bugs including sub-par performance thanks to its paltry 4GB RAM. It also continues to have plenty of bugs that Google is yet to fix, months after releasing the phone and rolling out multiple software update.

The extremely high price tag of the Pixel 3 series does not help things much as well. Google needs to realize that to sell smartphones in bulk quantities, it needs to offer the same set of features and performance as other flagship smartphones in the market. However, the Pixel series has consistently lagged behind the competition in terms of features, with its camera performance being the only redeeming quality.

Google will launch a mid-range Pixel 3a series at Google I/O 2019 next month. If the company gets the pricing right, then the phones should do well in terms of sales.