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My mother still has an old iPhone because it fits her hand. They don't seem to get this anymore.
by brikym 8mo ago
My mother still has an old iPhone because it fits her hand. They don't seem to get this anymore.
- cactusplant7374 8mo agoSmaller phones aren't great for older people because of the increased font size that they use. They can barely fit a sentence onto the screen.
- Aurornis 8mo agoThey releasee the iPhone 13 mini for all of the customers who wanted smaller phones It sold very poorly. Despite all of the YouTubers and social media posts calling for smaller iPhones, the real demand for these is very small. The older demographics generally prefer larger phones because they have larger screens, which are better for aging eyes.
- rgovostes 8mo agoI can't believe Apple expected the 13 mini to be a hot seller; most people holding out for a small phone probably would have already bought the 12 mini just a year prior. The 13 mini was an incremental update -- basically just alleged camera improvements that I could not discern myself in a few minutes of testing.
- asdff 8mo agoIt was cannibalized by iphone 12 mini and also se and older iphones still being sold by carriers. All that going on and it still sold millions of units. If it was any other phone manufacturer but apple they'd be happy with those numbers. In fact if it was apple 10 or 15 years ago they'd also probably be happy with those numbers. You also have to understand the psychological profile of us "utilitarian" iphone users. We only get one when our hands are forced either hardware failure or forced software obsolescence. The iphone mini came to market and was discontinued all in the time I was still using my SE.
- vjvjvjvjghv 8mo ago"If it was any other phone manufacturer but apple they'd be happy with those numbers" That's what sucks about these huge dominant companies. They suppress interesting products because they don't reach the huge sales they need to make a difference to a trillion dollar company. And smaller companies can't compete against these behemoths.
- MostlyStable 8mo agoSo I've never gotten a satisfactory answer as to why there aren't interesting niche phones that don't sell a ton (anymore: android used to be full of them, that was half the point), but are enough for a small company to make consistent (but small) profits. People who want niche phones are a tiny fraction of the market....but the smartphone market is enormous. A tiny fraction seems like it should be able to sustain a few small companies. My best guess is that the kind of person who would found a company capable of making such a phone won't do it because they know it doesn't have potential to make them fabulously wealthy (just regular old wealthy) because it's inherently limited in scale. And the big companies don't do it because, while such a line could be profitable, in the absence of competition, it's more profitable to force their consumers to buy the "main" line and not make another product line.
- Gigachad 8mo agoMy guess is they are only able to make the phones cheap if it’s sold at huge scale. If you make some niche small phone, the price goes way up and doesn’t look attractive. Then you have to deal with the fact that the people with obscure requirements have a million other requirements. The person asking for a small phone then complains it doesn’t have a headphone jack, and AV1 decoding, and 16gb memory, and an unlocked bootloader, and whatever else.
- orev 8mo agoThe 13 mini sold poorly because all of those same influencers just would not stop complaining that it had less battery life than a Max. I mean, of course the battery life wasn’t as good, because it was a smaller battery! But the people who want a mini aren’t influencers who need a phone that can go 18 hours without a break. It was absolutely this manufactured “range anxiety” that killed it.
- hatsix 8mo ago"Didn't sell very well" = "Sold better than most Android phones that year"