On Wednesday, Google  (GOOGL)  will announce the latest additions to its smartphone lineup with the Pixel 10 series. The latest installment in the Pixel series is expected to feature Google’s next-generation Tensor G5 chip, an improved modem, and an expansion of its built-in AI features.

You likely haven’t heard much about it, at least if you live in the United States, where iPhones are far more plentiful. And Google isn’t even the second choice for most smartphone shoppers. It regularly comes behind Samsung and Motorola in sales.

Despite its best efforts to convert its successes as a search and advertising giant to the world of consumer hardware, it remains something of a rounding error for the company. After all, the company that just reported $96.4 billion in Q2 revenue, the majority from advertising.

That’s to say, hardware products aren’t a serious priority. Bundled in with the “Subscriptions, Platforms & Devices” segment of its business, Pixel only gets one mention in its 57-page quarterly filing. It’s subsisted into a slosh fund of revenue derived from consumer subscriptions like YouTube Premium and its Google Play app store.

And as build quality and performance problems with past handsets demonstrate, sometimes its priorities show. Even the company’s regulars are known to complain about quality woes on the r/GooglePixel subreddit. The company has been known to shrug off problems too, as a controversy surrounding its budget Pixel 6a has shown.

Still, the Google Pixel 9 series saw a record-setting launch. And in recent months, the Pixel 9 series was said to be the fourth-best selling phone in the U.S. smartphone market. You don’t get there without doing something right.

Google’s Pixel business might be, from the looks of it, in the best shape it has ever been. But if they play their cards right, the Pixel 10 has an opportunity to be an even bigger success for the company. It just has to repeat the past.

Marginal Changes, Fantastic Value

Most smartphone users are taking longer to upgrade, citing the marginal improvements made on recent handsets. Maybe the phone’s internals have been upgraded, the camera got a facelift, and there are some next-gen exclusive software features. For many people, it doesn’t matter.

But Google gave many folks a great reason to upgrade to the Google Pixel 9: value. If you bought Google’s latest handset directly from the Google Store, they offered top-dollar on trade-ins, significantly reducing the price of the Google Pixel 9. For some, it even made it free or almost free.

And as if that wasn’t enough, they threw in a $200 Google Store credit, enough to take over 60% off the new Pixel Watch 3 — or at a minimum, to buy a few accessories. 

Then, there were even more freebies. For those who bought the Google Pixel 9, there was a free year of Google One with 2 terabytes of free storage (a $9.99/mo value). And those who bought the more premium Google Pixel 9 Pro got a year of Gemini Pro with their 2TB of storage (a $19.99/mo value).

A Strategy to Retain Loyalists

Based on the state of the smartphone market, it feels like a near-certainty that some sort of promotion will be offered. Besides, in the grand scheme of things, it might be a small price to pay for the tech giant.

Google has offered strong incentives to upgrade (or swap) for a next-gen Pixel. And if those incentives exist for the Google Pixel 10 series, it might make sense to upgrade again, even more so if you’re a storage maximalist and toying with Google’s large language model, Gemini. 

It might also simply be the cost of retaining the company’s hardware loyalists. In the past, Google tested similar models to increase engagement and repeat-buying with Pixel Pass — a subscription that offered a handful of services and the option to upgrade to a next-gen Pixel after two years. 

Unfortunately, the company chose to discontinue the service before upgrading anybody’s phone. (It’s one of the hundreds of products that Google has killed over its history, per the Google Graveyard.)

In its explanation, Google argued that they wanted to offer customers more flexibility to upgrade when they wanted to. Ironically, it seems to have paid off for many Pixel users: buying a new Pixel phone to secure the promotions seems to be as good as, if not better, than Pixel Pass.

More importantly, it seems to be working. While hardware remains a smaller portion of Google’s business, every successive Pixel handset seems to sell better than the last. And quality concerns aside, that’s great news for the world’s most profitable company.