Alphabet posts revenue of $26 billion as hardware unit gains momentum

Alphabet's Other Bets are starting to pay off.

Google's parent company Alphabet posted Q4 2016 earnings of $26 billion, an increase of 22% from the $21.3 billion it netted during the same period in 2015. Profits also saw a healthy increase to $5.3 billion, up $300 million from last quarter.

With $22.4 billion coming in from advertising, search and YouTube ads continue to be the main driver for Alphabet. As usual, Google led the way with overall revenue of $25.8 billion and profits of $7.8 billion. What's particularly interesting is the revenue from Google's non-advertising business — Google Play, Google Cloud, and the hardware unit, which exceeded $3.4 billion. Google didn't provide a breakdown of how each individual business unit performed, but it's clear that the company's hardware and cloud push is gaining momentum.

Without revealing sales figures, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the company was "thrilled" with the performance of the Pixel. The phone has certainly exceeded expectations, with Google struggling to meet demand three months after launch.

Alphabet's Other Bets are also starting to bear fruit. Revenue from its moonshots increased to $262 million, up from $150 million in Q4 2015. Operating loss also came down by 10% to $1.09 billion.