Well, I'm not one of those "not if Steve Jobs was alive" guys, but reportedly, for instance, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, they had a lot of products with poor differentiation, and he did this:
They create one option in each category. That's all.
5 is really kind of pushing for one consumer focused product if you don't want your buyers to feel like they could've made a better choice, or at least feel like they've missed out on something:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
In general, people like a few good options. Given a lot of good options, they can get an equally good outcome, and feel less good about it at the end.
I think Apple has banked on that in the past, but not so much with 5 active models of iPad, in my opinion.
While Steve Jobs was alive, they had four iPods by 2011: the shuffle, the Nano, the Classic, and the Touch. The iPhone was really just an iPod with cellular capabilities during its first four years and it was treated as such - same connector, still required iTunes, and to this day it still can use the old iPod protocol to connect to iPod compatible devices.
When Jobs came back they were a struggling company. Worth $4 billion. Now they are worth $1 trillion depending on the month. He had to focus Apple. He had to focus Apple.
http://www.howtoanalyst.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Steve...
They create one option in each category. That's all.
5 is really kind of pushing for one consumer focused product if you don't want your buyers to feel like they could've made a better choice, or at least feel like they've missed out on something: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paradox_of_Choice
In general, people like a few good options. Given a lot of good options, they can get an equally good outcome, and feel less good about it at the end.
I think Apple has banked on that in the past, but not so much with 5 active models of iPad, in my opinion.