Apple tried with the iPhone 12 mini, and the iPhone 13 mini. They were only 5% of phones sold globally, and only 3% of phones sold in the US.
The desire for small phones is an internet thing, but not backed by the market. Take it as a reality check for how internet opinions can be mostly irrelevant.
At the scale of Apple, is a specific device configuration that 'only' meets the needs of 3% of their market economically unviable? Did they build a whole special factory just for the slightly smaller device?
Not a whole factory but whole other tooling, so yes? The chassis is different, the screen is different, the mainboard is different, the layout is different, the battery is different, I think the camera was also different. Only thing shared between the other models was the buttons and the lightning port.
It's a huge cost for something that sold (relatively) poorly.
But it’s better to sell phones with better margin. More people need to take Econ 101. Opportunity cost is an actual thing. You can be sure they did the math. Selling ever so slightly fewer larger phones at higher margin is better than selling slightly more phones at a lower margin.
Apple knows its sales and profits much better than anyone else.
More skus is really really expensive quite often. You can end up with a low run product that is even more expensive than a 'premium' larger/nicer product.
Exactly. But Apple has so many low hanging fruits that anything that doesn't make billions is irrelevant to them.
Apple is making way too much money for the good of their customers. If only people would stop mindlessly buying, they would eventually listen but their userbase has become so huge that they are not going to change anytime soon.
Nobody buys Apple products anymore because they’re too popular? Or maybe they’d be more popular if people bought fewer devices? I can’t make any sense out of what you’re saying.
What if, and I know this is a crazy thought but what if people aren’t buying Apple products mindlessly? What if they buy them because they like them? Maybe they’d didn’t buy the mini phones because they didn’t like them.
I didn't say any of the weird questions/statement you try to pin me for.
Maybe it doesn't make sense to you because you are confused?
Then again, you are confused, I never said they were buying mindlessly. They buy it because they are popular and confer status. This is why the vast majority of people buy them, not a well-reasoned and careful choice attained by proper comparison and knowledge after reviewing options.
It's not good for people who view those things as tools, because price increase and focus on the historical target group diminish tremendously.
It's not something that is exclusive to Apple but it's particularly painful because of the quirks of computing (having software linked to a particular hardware platform).
And yes, they didn't buy the Mini phone because they didn't like them. It confers less status and is not as good as a social media machine, so of course.
But by this logic McDonalds must be good because of how many people like them and somehow that's a desirable and valuable outcome.
3% can be "small" in the sense of operationally-insignificant/low-ROI, even at Apple's scale, when you consider that they only have a handful of models (currently five) shipping simultaneously.
Figure most of those 3% would buy a different iPhone model if their preference was not available (not Android, because even if brand loyalty / ecosystem lock-in wasn't so powerful, the Android small-phone options are not competitive).
Then figure that 0.5% (generously!) of lost revenue has to pay for all the custom tooling, parts, manufacturing lines, etc.
... and it all makes an infernal kind of sense.
I'm still anachronistically appreciating my iPhone SE (Gen 1) with a 4" IPS display, Touch ID, Lightning connector, and a 3.5mm audio jack. It's great!
Except that I'll need to upgrade from iOS 15 at some point. :)
> The desire for small phones is an internet thing, but not backed by the market. Take it as a reality check for how internet opinions can be mostly irrelevant.
People have said this for years, but the mini phones were never going to be instant day-one hits. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy to launch them during Covid, offer them 2 years, and say no one wants them.
Give them a permanent place in the lineup, treating phones like every other very personal device meant for humans. Small, medium, and large.
If you do that, and give people time to see exactly why 5.42 screens are superior to 6.1"+ sizes, then I think the numbers will start to change from what we saw with the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 13 mini that were launched when people were less on the go than in 100 years.
And no, I don't think a mini SKU can ever beat out the "cheap and big" midrange device that the average person is going to go for. Those will never be beat because they have perceived value. But I would bet in time it comes close or beats the "big and expensive" iPhone Pro Max option.
Apple tried with the iPhone 12 mini, and the iPhone 13 mini. They were only 5% of phones sold globally, and only 3% of phones sold in the US.
The desire for small phones is an internet thing, but not backed by the market. Take it as a reality check for how internet opinions can be mostly irrelevant.