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
The problem is that the bar for "commercial failure" is too low. I not only would pay more for a qwerty device but I have multiple times and I've delayed purchases of a device when no qwerty option was available. And I know there are thousands of people like me.

But there aren't hundreds of millions of people like me. And the bar for "success" is selling that many units so it gets considered a "failure"