zlacker

>>asimop+(OP)
The hard reality is that there is no PAYING market for such a device, because when it comes to the point-of-sale, most people still choose the normal-size device with better screen/battery/camera.

This is equivalent to something I called the "QWERTY paradox" more than a decade ago:

Back when the Smartphone market exploded, people disliked typing on a touchscreen and repeatedly stated that they want a device with a physical keyboard.

There was plenty of evidence, surveys, market studies, trend predictions, devices for these "Messaging-centric" use-cases were always part of this market-demand roster.

But whenever someone answered the call and built a Smartphone with QWERTY keyboard, the product failed commercially, simply because also to people claiming they want such a phone, at the point of sale they were less attractive than their slimmer, lighter, all-screen counterparts.

Every major vendor went through this cycle of learning that lesson, usually with an iteration like "it needs to be a premium high-spec device" --> (didn't sell) --> "ah, it should be mass-market" --> (also didn't sell).

You can find this journey for every vendor. Samsung, LG, HTC, Motorola, Sony.

The same lessons were already learnt for small-screen devices: There was a "Mini" series of Samsung Galaxy, LG G-series, HTC One, Sony Xperia. It didn't sell, the numbers showed that it didn't attract additional customers, at best it only fragmented the existing customer-base.

Source: I work in that industry for a long time now

>>rickde+qp1
Even if was a small % of the Apple lineup, the iPhone mini was one the best selling smartphones all brands considered. I for one switched to iPhone in 2020 specifically because there wasn't a single current-gen small form-factor Android phone anymore. I have a few friend that also made the switch with the 12 / 13 Mini for that reason.

The real reason the iPhone mini failed is not related to screen size, it's because its segment was canibalized by the cheaper alternative, the SE. The 2020 and 2022 sold like hot breads, wherehas their screen was almost an inch smaller than the iPhone mini. This is the proof that there a significant market for people who don't care about size and would gladly take the smallest option at a $100 discount from the regular one.

>>oreill+js1
> Even if was a small % of the Apple lineup, the iPhone mini was one the best selling smartphones all brands considered

Correct. To back this up a little bit with numbers, the iPhone 13 Mini all by itself sold about the half of the rate of the entire Google Pixel lineup. I bet lots of phone manufacturers would love to have half the sales of Google's premier Android phone. I also switched from Android to iPhone solely because of the 13 Mini form factor (I prefer Android, but I prefer a human-hand-sized phone even more).

Source:

Google shipped about 10 million Pixel phones in a year https://9to5google.com/2024/02/22/pixel-2023/

iPhone Mini accounted for about 3% of iPhone sales https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/21/cirp-iphone-13-best-selling-l...

iPhones sell about 200 million units per year https://www.demandsage.com/iphone-user-statistics/

200 million * 0.03 = 6 million iPhone Minis per year