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> Big companies are drowning in market data. They know some people really, really want small phones. But it's a long-tail opportunity they're willfully ignoring

> Big companies are drowning in market data. They know some people really, really want small phones. But it's a long-tail opportunity they're willfully ignoring I would argue that they don’t know what people want at all, since market data just reinforces previously held assumptions. For example if you surveyed people in 2006 what kind of phone they wanted, most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone. It wasn’t until Apple came along and defined a new market that Smartphones even became a thing in the mainstream consciousness.

toqy 4y ago
Smaller screened smartphones aren't a new market that needs to be defined though. Most people know what they are by virtue of having lived through the era that they were the only choice. And as OP pointed out, Apple makes a smaller screened smartphone, so they exist. In some comment on this post someone said that it accounts for 3% of Apple's phone sales. How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone but aren't willing or able to switch to Apple? Who knows. My intuition says not many, but maybe we'll find out through OP's efforts. I'm an iPhone user and the only reason I haven't switched to something like the iPhone Mini is because I want the better camera on the pro's.
- GekkePrutser 4y ago
  Apple's limited success is not only a factor of the screen size but also market positioning. The mini is inferior in some specs to other iPhones but at the same time really high end as far as mobiles in general go. That makes it a niche product even if screen size was not a factor at all. It targets people that have plenty of cash for a flagship but are willing to forego the top tier specs for a smaller size. Apple prefers you just buy the pro. And if you don't have much cash you can get the reheated 2017 iphone 8 with SE slapped on it :) I bet if they made a mini T the price of an SE with a more limited camera and screen spec than the current mini it would take 50% of SE sales away. You can't judge the market viability of one aspect based on a single model.
  - hedgehog 4y ago
    Even the small phone user base is probably fragmented between people who want a lower cost phone and people like me that want the Pro or better, just smaller.
    - 8ytecoder 4y ago
      Apple already has the SE for the low cost market. They have positioned the mini as the mid-range. What they're missing is a high-end small phone. I'd happily pay for it.
      - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
        iPhone 13 mini. Having said that, the specs of the SE are nothing to sneeze at.
        hedgehog 4y ago
        It doesn't have the full camera. Edit: I'm not sure what the disagreement is but it's objectively verifiable that the 13 Mini does not have the same camera setup as the 13 Pro.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - derefr 4y ago
        The current SE isn't a small phone; it's a previous-era-of-design phone. It's a phone from before phones gave you as much screen as would fit on the front face of the body. If you want that, you can just buy any new-old-stock phone from 5 years ago; they're all cheap, they're all that size, and they're all (IMHO) painful to read or watch anything on. A low-cost small phone would be the opposite of the SE: not good-specs, bad-screen; but rather all-screen, bad-specs. An iPhone Mini minus-minus.
        4y ago
- kingcharles 4y ago
  None of the leaked specs (if real) for iPhone 14 include a "Mini" variant, so it looks like Apple killed theirs. I'm going to buy a 13 Mini because of Apple's long term support, so it should last me a good few years.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    I do not care if they do not make a new mini every year. I just want a mini available for purchase, and the 13 mini should be very capable for at least a few more years.
    - usrusr 4y ago
      That might actually be what Apple is doing, skipping mini for 14, but not stopping mini forever. Sony did the same, there where Compacts of Z1, Z3 and Z5.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- Nition 4y ago
  > How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone but aren't willing or able to switch to Apple? It just feels like surely capturing 100% of the market for premium small Android phones (there really are none right now) must be at least as good as yet another large Android phone entering a market full of large Android phones.
- robocat 4y ago
  I suspect there are two constraints working against mini mobiles: 1. The industry push for thin due to the consumer dislike of thick. 2. The invisible consumer expectation that smaller mobiles should be cheaper. A mini screen with a fat body (large battery, good camera) is what many functionally oriented people should want, but cost and form will limit consumer desire and make it an extremely niche product?!? Edit: I am thinking more Canon IXUS cross bred with a 20000mAh powerbank and stock Android One. In fact Canon or another reliable camera brand would be the perfect manufacturer. Fat and robust could work: sell the functionally ugly to practical tradesmen type? Unfortunately writer desires thin and light, which I don’t care about. No need for front-facing camera, instead put a 1” (4:3?) screen on the side of the main camera to allow for pointing/framing when doing selfies. Functionally oriented people often have other constraints. I have tight constraints for mobiles: I am price sensitive (I break or lose phones), I want vanilla Android (manufacturer skinned often has broken upgrades & broken privacy & broken features), and I generally won’t buy products from extremely niche brands (unpredictable reliability, & trust issues).
  - fomine3 4y ago
    * Small battery capacity * Lower performance due to small battery and poorer heat dissipation * No physical space to put top-tier camera
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      The battery doesn't have to be small if you're okay with moderate thickness. And a lot of power goes to the screen so that cancels out. To the extent that this is true, you're just restating "push for thin" and it's not a separate problem. Lower performance than what? I'm not convinced that's a real issue unless you're trying to make a flagship. Why couldn't you fit a top-tier camera? That's like a square centimeter.
      - robocat 4y ago
        > That's like a square centimeter. I was thinking much larger optics and mechanicals, similar to a PowerShot N (except with modern video specs): Optical image stabilization, 8x optical zoom, 1/2.3" Sensor (6.17mm x 4.55 mm), Maximum aperture F3–5.9, Macro focus range 1cm. A real camera: even though I realise in the past there have been plenty of failed camera-phones in the marketplace! https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Canon+PowerShot+N+Teardown/61682 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Canon+PowerShot+N+Teardown/6... https://m.dpreview.com/products/canon/compacts/canon_n/specification https://m.dpreview.com/products/canon/compacts/canon_n/speci...
scarface74 4y ago
Apple has market data - they sold a premium small phone for two years. Rumors are that they will be discontinuing them this year.
- krzyk 4y ago
  It was almost premium. Still didn't had Pros camera. Real example was Pixel until version 4. The only difference between smaller and bigger versions was the obvious screen and battery.
  - fomine3 4y ago
    non-mini iPhone 12/13 are sold well enough.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And Google also stopped selling smaller phones…
  - peregren 4y ago
    That’s splitting hairs. Premium ≠ Best in all components. And the iPhone 12 and 13 have sold pretty well by all reports so the screen size is the only differentiator feature wise. (And battery which is unavoidable)
jdironman 4y ago
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford. However, in this day and time when it comes to established tech such as a smart phone, sometimes the best way to 'innovate' might be to give people what they actually want. Sure not all companies can cater all niches. But hopefully someone will! Im also a small phone advocate.
- dismantlethesun 4y ago
  Also horses that could run at 100mph for 5 hours at a time would be far better than early cars. They run on clean renewable fuel, have built in natural intelligence to avoid crashes and carry drunk drivers, and come in a variety of pleasing colors (not just black!). The main benefit of cars was that if you delay maintenance your transportation doesn’t die.
  - SoftTalker 4y ago
    The emissions weren't so pleasant, however!
    - 6510 4y ago
      But you do get self replication. Try wrapping your head around that feature.
      - MichaelZuo 4y ago
        By the time any consumer product offers self replication as a feature, would anyone even remember what smartphones were?
        _carbyau_ 4y ago
        Have people not seen any sci fi with self replicating mechanicals? It never goes well. Humans wouldn't be around for very long to remember anything at all.
boznz 4y ago
>For example if you surveyed people in 2006 what kind of phone they wanted, most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone. Better flip phone would be good too.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  Samsung make one called the Z-flip. Way too expensive for me, but to me it's the better flip phone I've been waiting for since 2005!
  - drited 4y ago
    I have the Z-Flip 3 and love it. It meets the 2 criteria of the post's 4 that matter to me: 1.fits nicely in pocket. I can sit down comfortably with it in a pair of jeans. No dodgy posture. 2. Won't fall out of my pocket Its screen is also much less likely to break like has happened with all my old phones when they accidentally fall out of jacket pocket
    - metadat 4y ago
      Just don't drop it on the hinge. Also the z-flip battery life is atrocious, and the CPU is old prev gen tech. I really want a top tier foldable.
      - drited 4y ago
        I too want a foldable with the latest generation tech but is that available today? At the time I bought the z-flip 3 my understanding was that the tradeoff was unavoidable. My opinion at the time of purchase was that the incremental benefit of the latest version of CPU, camera and battery were pretty marginal relative to the large benefit from the unique form factor. I'm not currently in the market but that could well have changed if new foldables have since been released.
stingrae 4y ago
Unfortunately it has been tested. Rumors say that there won't be an iPhone 14 mini. (Sent from an iPhone 12 mini).
madeofpalk 4y ago
"They" say that people just don't by the smaller iPhone. People always go for the larger + cheaper thing. Apple has weird economics where I'm sure they profit handsomely from iPhone Mini, but they tend to get rid of things if they don't make $10b annually.
heavyset_go 4y ago
Slate phones were already a trend before the iPhone.
sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
> most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone I'm not sure about that, sidekicks, plan and blackberry were pretty popular and gaining a lot of mainstream interest for modern 'smartphone' type things
johnebgd 4y ago
I’ve owned smart phones since the treo. I’ve owned blackberry phones, windows mobile, even a palm pre. I’ve had nearly every iPhone since launch. I’m on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Nothing makes me yearn for a smaller screen. I held an iPhone 3G in my hand last week after finding it in a drawer and was amazed at how it felt too small to be really useful these days. My gal has a 13 pro max. My folks have larger phones. My siblings have larger phones. My friends, colleagues, business partners, clients, all have larger phones. The biggest complaint I hear is battery life. I hope small screen fans find what they want but I do not believe it’s a big market.
- WheatM 4y ago
- davidthewatson 4y ago
  The reason it's not a big market is that if glove-sizing worked the same way as phones, you'd have people with small glove size walking around in ginormous gloves. That's not the case because glove sizing actually behaves rationally, as opposed to truck-sizing, where every human in America wants a ginormous truck regardless of their actual need. Sadly, phones follow trucks, not gloves, because the former is ego-driven, not need-driven. Apple deserves credit for recognizing the counter-example to its own market presence and engages fully around it while no competitor follows suit.
- stevage 4y ago
  Agreed. When I bought the original Samsung Galaxy Note, my friends all thought it was hilariously, ridiculously, impractically large. It was smaller than my current Pixel 5. Yes, this phone is hard to use one handed, but the value of the large screen outweighs everything else.
chirau 4y ago
Last month I had to use an Essentials PH-1 phone for a day while i waited for a new phone. It was the perfect size for me and the build quality was really nice. Unfortunately, the OS was outdate and the specs not as high. It has 4GB RAM, Snapdragon 825, 13MP camera @ 2160p and a 5.7" display. It looked premium, it felt premium and was the perfect size. If someone could pack more punch with specs in that phone I would buy it for even $1k.

toqy 4y ago

Smaller screened smartphones aren't a new market that needs to be defined though. Most people know what they are by virtue of having lived through the era that they were the only choice. And as OP pointed out, Apple makes a smaller screened smartphone, so they exist. In some comment on this post someone said that it accounts for 3% of Apple's phone sales. How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone but aren't willing or able to switch to Apple? Who knows. My intuition says not many, but maybe we'll find out through OP's efforts. I'm an iPhone user and the only reason I haven't switched to something like the iPhone Mini is because I want the better camera on the pro's.

GekkePrutser 4y ago
Apple's limited success is not only a factor of the screen size but also market positioning. The mini is inferior in some specs to other iPhones but at the same time really high end as far as mobiles in general go. That makes it a niche product even if screen size was not a factor at all. It targets people that have plenty of cash for a flagship but are willing to forego the top tier specs for a smaller size. Apple prefers you just buy the pro. And if you don't have much cash you can get the reheated 2017 iphone 8 with SE slapped on it :) I bet if they made a mini T the price of an SE with a more limited camera and screen spec than the current mini it would take 50% of SE sales away. You can't judge the market viability of one aspect based on a single model.
- hedgehog 4y ago
  Even the small phone user base is probably fragmented between people who want a lower cost phone and people like me that want the Pro or better, just smaller.
  - 8ytecoder 4y ago
    Apple already has the SE for the low cost market. They have positioned the mini as the mid-range. What they're missing is a high-end small phone. I'd happily pay for it.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 4y ago
      iPhone 13 mini. Having said that, the specs of the SE are nothing to sneeze at.
      - hedgehog 4y ago
        It doesn't have the full camera. Edit: I'm not sure what the disagreement is but it's objectively verifiable that the 13 Mini does not have the same camera setup as the 13 Pro.
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
    - derefr 4y ago
      The current SE isn't a small phone; it's a previous-era-of-design phone. It's a phone from before phones gave you as much screen as would fit on the front face of the body. If you want that, you can just buy any new-old-stock phone from 5 years ago; they're all cheap, they're all that size, and they're all (IMHO) painful to read or watch anything on. A low-cost small phone would be the opposite of the SE: not good-specs, bad-screen; but rather all-screen, bad-specs. An iPhone Mini minus-minus.
      - 4y ago
kingcharles 4y ago
None of the leaked specs (if real) for iPhone 14 include a "Mini" variant, so it looks like Apple killed theirs. I'm going to buy a 13 Mini because of Apple's long term support, so it should last me a good few years.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  I do not care if they do not make a new mini every year. I just want a mini available for purchase, and the 13 mini should be very capable for at least a few more years.
  - usrusr 4y ago
    That might actually be what Apple is doing, skipping mini for 14, but not stopping mini forever. Sony did the same, there where Compacts of Z1, Z3 and Z5.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
Nition 4y ago
> How big is the group of people that want a smaller smart phone but aren't willing or able to switch to Apple? It just feels like surely capturing 100% of the market for premium small Android phones (there really are none right now) must be at least as good as yet another large Android phone entering a market full of large Android phones.
robocat 4y ago
I suspect there are two constraints working against mini mobiles: 1. The industry push for thin due to the consumer dislike of thick. 2. The invisible consumer expectation that smaller mobiles should be cheaper. A mini screen with a fat body (large battery, good camera) is what many functionally oriented people should want, but cost and form will limit consumer desire and make it an extremely niche product?!? Edit: I am thinking more Canon IXUS cross bred with a 20000mAh powerbank and stock Android One. In fact Canon or another reliable camera brand would be the perfect manufacturer. Fat and robust could work: sell the functionally ugly to practical tradesmen type? Unfortunately writer desires thin and light, which I don’t care about. No need for front-facing camera, instead put a 1” (4:3?) screen on the side of the main camera to allow for pointing/framing when doing selfies. Functionally oriented people often have other constraints. I have tight constraints for mobiles: I am price sensitive (I break or lose phones), I want vanilla Android (manufacturer skinned often has broken upgrades & broken privacy & broken features), and I generally won’t buy products from extremely niche brands (unpredictable reliability, & trust issues).
- fomine3 4y ago
  * Small battery capacity * Lower performance due to small battery and poorer heat dissipation * No physical space to put top-tier camera
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    The battery doesn't have to be small if you're okay with moderate thickness. And a lot of power goes to the screen so that cancels out. To the extent that this is true, you're just restating "push for thin" and it's not a separate problem. Lower performance than what? I'm not convinced that's a real issue unless you're trying to make a flagship. Why couldn't you fit a top-tier camera? That's like a square centimeter.
    - robocat 4y ago
      > That's like a square centimeter. I was thinking much larger optics and mechanicals, similar to a PowerShot N (except with modern video specs): Optical image stabilization, 8x optical zoom, 1/2.3" Sensor (6.17mm x 4.55 mm), Maximum aperture F3–5.9, Macro focus range 1cm. A real camera: even though I realise in the past there have been plenty of failed camera-phones in the marketplace! https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Canon+PowerShot+N+Teardown/61682 https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Canon+PowerShot+N+Teardown/6... https://m.dpreview.com/products/canon/compacts/canon_n/specification https://m.dpreview.com/products/canon/compacts/canon_n/speci...

scarface74 4y ago

Apple has market data - they sold a premium small phone for two years. Rumors are that they will be discontinuing them this year.

krzyk 4y ago
It was almost premium. Still didn't had Pros camera. Real example was Pixel until version 4. The only difference between smaller and bigger versions was the obvious screen and battery.
- fomine3 4y ago
  non-mini iPhone 12/13 are sold well enough.
- scarface74 4y ago
  And Google also stopped selling smaller phones…
- peregren 4y ago
  That’s splitting hairs. Premium ≠ Best in all components. And the iPhone 12 and 13 have sold pretty well by all reports so the screen size is the only differentiator feature wise. (And battery which is unavoidable)

jdironman 4y ago

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford. However, in this day and time when it comes to established tech such as a smart phone, sometimes the best way to 'innovate' might be to give people what they actually want. Sure not all companies can cater all niches. But hopefully someone will! Im also a small phone advocate.

dismantlethesun 4y ago
Also horses that could run at 100mph for 5 hours at a time would be far better than early cars. They run on clean renewable fuel, have built in natural intelligence to avoid crashes and carry drunk drivers, and come in a variety of pleasing colors (not just black!). The main benefit of cars was that if you delay maintenance your transportation doesn’t die.
- SoftTalker 4y ago
  The emissions weren't so pleasant, however!
  - 6510 4y ago
    But you do get self replication. Try wrapping your head around that feature.
    - MichaelZuo 4y ago
      By the time any consumer product offers self replication as a feature, would anyone even remember what smartphones were?
      - _carbyau_ 4y ago
        Have people not seen any sci fi with self replicating mechanicals? It never goes well. Humans wouldn't be around for very long to remember anything at all.

boznz 4y ago

>For example if you surveyed people in 2006 what kind of phone they wanted, most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone. Better flip phone would be good too.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
Samsung make one called the Z-flip. Way too expensive for me, but to me it's the better flip phone I've been waiting for since 2005!
- drited 4y ago
  I have the Z-Flip 3 and love it. It meets the 2 criteria of the post's 4 that matter to me: 1.fits nicely in pocket. I can sit down comfortably with it in a pair of jeans. No dodgy posture. 2. Won't fall out of my pocket Its screen is also much less likely to break like has happened with all my old phones when they accidentally fall out of jacket pocket
  - metadat 4y ago
    Just don't drop it on the hinge. Also the z-flip battery life is atrocious, and the CPU is old prev gen tech. I really want a top tier foldable.
    - drited 4y ago
      I too want a foldable with the latest generation tech but is that available today? At the time I bought the z-flip 3 my understanding was that the tradeoff was unavoidable. My opinion at the time of purchase was that the incremental benefit of the latest version of CPU, camera and battery were pretty marginal relative to the large benefit from the unique form factor. I'm not currently in the market but that could well have changed if new foldables have since been released.

stingrae 4y ago

Unfortunately it has been tested. Rumors say that there won't be an iPhone 14 mini. (Sent from an iPhone 12 mini).

madeofpalk 4y ago

"They" say that people just don't by the smaller iPhone. People always go for the larger + cheaper thing. Apple has weird economics where I'm sure they profit handsomely from iPhone Mini, but they tend to get rid of things if they don't make $10b annually.

heavyset_go 4y ago

Slate phones were already a trend before the iPhone.

sorry_outta_gas 4y ago

> most consumers would probably ask for a better flip phone I'm not sure about that, sidekicks, plan and blackberry were pretty popular and gaining a lot of mainstream interest for modern 'smartphone' type things

johnebgd 4y ago

I’ve owned smart phones since the treo. I’ve owned blackberry phones, windows mobile, even a palm pre. I’ve had nearly every iPhone since launch. I’m on an iPhone 13 Pro Max. Nothing makes me yearn for a smaller screen. I held an iPhone 3G in my hand last week after finding it in a drawer and was amazed at how it felt too small to be really useful these days. My gal has a 13 pro max. My folks have larger phones. My siblings have larger phones. My friends, colleagues, business partners, clients, all have larger phones. The biggest complaint I hear is battery life. I hope small screen fans find what they want but I do not believe it’s a big market.

WheatM 4y ago
davidthewatson 4y ago
The reason it's not a big market is that if glove-sizing worked the same way as phones, you'd have people with small glove size walking around in ginormous gloves. That's not the case because glove sizing actually behaves rationally, as opposed to truck-sizing, where every human in America wants a ginormous truck regardless of their actual need. Sadly, phones follow trucks, not gloves, because the former is ego-driven, not need-driven. Apple deserves credit for recognizing the counter-example to its own market presence and engages fully around it while no competitor follows suit.
stevage 4y ago
Agreed. When I bought the original Samsung Galaxy Note, my friends all thought it was hilariously, ridiculously, impractically large. It was smaller than my current Pixel 5. Yes, this phone is hard to use one handed, but the value of the large screen outweighs everything else.

chirau 4y ago

Last month I had to use an Essentials PH-1 phone for a day while i waited for a new phone. It was the perfect size for me and the build quality was really nice. Unfortunately, the OS was outdate and the specs not as high. It has 4GB RAM, Snapdragon 825, 13MP camera @ 2160p and a 5.7" display. It looked premium, it felt premium and was the perfect size. If someone could pack more punch with specs in that phone I would buy it for even $1k.