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"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 inte

"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 ago
So 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 ago
  My 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.
  - hnfong 8mo ago
    Yeah, imagine being a small phone manufacturer today, trying to secure RAM supplies.
  - MostlyStable 8mo ago
    While being more expensive even further decreases your niche size, it still isn't obvious to me that this should be enough to prevent the niche from existing. I am one of those customers you talk about who has a lot of obscure preferences (I can't call them requirements because literally not a single existing phone matches all of them and yet I still buy phones). A phone that met most of them would be something I'd be willing to pay a pretty good premium for.

MostlyStable 8mo ago

So 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 ago
My 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.
- hnfong 8mo ago
  Yeah, imagine being a small phone manufacturer today, trying to secure RAM supplies.
- MostlyStable 8mo ago
  While being more expensive even further decreases your niche size, it still isn't obvious to me that this should be enough to prevent the niche from existing. I am one of those customers you talk about who has a lot of obscure preferences (I can't call them requirements because literally not a single existing phone matches all of them and yet I still buy phones). A phone that met most of them would be something I'd be willing to pay a pretty good premium for.