GoKawiilGoogle will no longer manufacture any Pixel device in China starting next year, according to Nikkei Asia. The company has been expanding its production capacity in Vietnam and India in recent years, but most of its manufacturing still takes place in China. Now, Google has reportedly told its suppliers that it will be moving the production of all Pixel phones, watches and earbuds outside of China starting in 2027.
Nikkei Asia reported back in January that Google would develop and manufacture its Pixel 11 devices in Vietnam. The company had to invest in testing equipment and tooling machines, as well as to verify and fine-tune the production process in order to build its latest Pixel phones in Vietnam from scratch. It was reportedly that success, which gave Google the confidence that it could also build the production processes for its other devices in the country. Smartphone manufacturing, after all, is more complex than the production of earbuds and smartwatches.
A source told the publication that it will be easier for Google to move out of China than, say, Apple, because it doesn't officially sell Pixel devices in the country. In addition, its userbase for its phones is still currently pretty small, and the the company could tap into the smartphone supply chain ecosystem that Samsung had already established in Vietnam.
Google has also apparently told its suppliers that it's planning to raise Pixel phone shipments by 8 to 10 percent this year from 2025's 12 million units. The company is hoping that its phones will serve as a way to get more people to use Gemini's AI capabilities. In order to shield itself from the rising costs of memory components, Google has reportedly been bundling its orders for phone memory chips with chip orders for its cloud computing business.