Google’s device business was also under pressure in the first quarter. During an earnings call, Alphabet CFO Ruth Porat said sales of the flagship Pixel handset were down year-on-year due to “recent pressures in the premium smartphone market”. Like larger handset makers, Google is hoping hardware growth will come from non-smartphone devices, and CEO Sundar Pichai claimed there was “strong momentum” behind the Home smart speaker with its Assistant ecosystem. Pichai said: “We really see it as incredibly important to drive the future of computing forward and to make sure our services are presented to users the way we intended them to be. Computing will evolve even beyond phones and we want to make sure we’re in there”. Google does…