What do you do when you’re developing something new, but even before you have the chance to announce it officially, someone else sweeps in and announces- not its launch- but its cancellation? Turns out, tech giant Google was faced with a similar dilemma.
Recently, a popular tech -related news platform reported the cancellation of Google Pixel 5a 5G (a new 5G mobile phone from Google, and a follow-up to last year’s massively successful Pixel 4a). Incidentally, most news outlets picked it up and even before Google could issue a statement, it was established that the Pixel line-up is a dud for the year, at least.
The news platform had earlier published information that the project was cancelled in its entirety (owing to the shortage of chips worldwide), which it had obtained from an apparent “leak”, which later turned out to be utterly false.
Nevertheless, Google has now come forth to refute all the claims made by the platform. The company has now said that Pixel 5a 5G will not be cancelled, but will instead be limited only to the United States and Japan, and that production in all other parts of the world will be cancelled. The statement reads, “Pixel 5a 5G is not cancelled. It will be available later this year in the U.S. and Japan and announced in line with when last year’s a-series phone was introduced.” While this isn’t exactly the conventional approach that your average ‘big players in the industry’ would take when it comes to tackling rumours, Google is often seen as slightly askew when it comes to making announcements about products.
This revelation puts the speculations that the release would be somewhere near the upcoming developer event Google I/O 2021, which is slated to start on May 18th, to rest. As Pixel 4a 5G was launched around late summer, it seems that this new product too, will likely follow suit and be available around the same time. Also expected to be released somewhat in tandem with the phone are the Pixel 4a Buds.
While the Pixel 5a model is expected to have quite a lot in common with its predecessor from last year, including the operating system being on the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor chip (the same one that’s under heavy shortage in the world right now), the move to restrict it to only two countries comes as somewhat of a surprise to developers, experts, and users alike. Especially since the 4a 5G model was launched in multiple areas apart from the United States and Japan, including Taiwan, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Germany, and Canada.
Google is not the only company, however, that is facing the crunch of the global shortage of the much popular chip. Contemporaries like Samsung too, having to reduce the production of smartphones. The production of Play Station 5 has also been badly affected.
Where did the rumor arise from in the first place, you ask? Well, there have been speculation that Google will discontinue the Pixel line, as, despite being popular, it has failed to leave a very major impact on the market. Nevertheless, even as the 5a 5G is set to be launched, the company’s developers will continue to focus on the 4a 5G line, which will in turn, be the Google product dominating the market in areas where the 5a 5G will not be stocked.
