Apple follows the market. There just aren’t many people who want small phones, HN notwithstanding. If they sold like hotcakes they’d have a full lineup.
And I kind of get it. Philosophically I want a small phone. Realities of age and eyesight forbid.
The market is basically people who don’t read or watch videos on their phone, and who have excellent eyesight, and who don’t care about having the best cameras. 100% legit market segment, but that Venn intersection is too small to be worth it.
I don't agree with this. In my view, there are plenty of cases where the product changes are shoved down our throats.
I think the problem is that the product folks don't actually listen to the market. They read Jobs' biography and are convinced that they will tell their users what product they will like and that they will see the light later on.
The sad reality is: they are not Jobs (and even he was not faultless). So, we get Mac like Windows interfaces, we get mail clients losing features, we get AI in every single app you see, etc.
The iphone air isn’t popular either and yet here we are. They preferred releasing a huge thin phone than a tiny thin phone. Even if the % of clients is small, there are still millions of potential mini clients
I interpret the same facts differently: I see Apple realizing that the SE form factor doesn’t sell enough to be worth it, and trying something different with the Air. It sounds like the Air will likely go the way of the SE, with occasional updates but not every year.
Apple is very good at market research and understanding users… but not perfect. I think they genuinely believed the Air would sell a lot more than it did.
And “millions” is not necessarily a lot. Apple sells 250 million phones a year. A SKU that sells 3 million is a distraction with much lower ROI against R&D than a mainline phone. It takes just as much engineering to create and as much manufacturing to produce, so fixed costs are spread among many fewer units.
Am old. Am experiencing presbyopia. Am still very much tied to my mini on the default font size. When I can't read something I just pinch/zoom. Meanwhile it's easy to hold & use in one hand while walking down the street, and fits into normal sized pockets.
And I kind of get it. Philosophically I want a small phone. Realities of age and eyesight forbid.
The market is basically people who don’t read or watch videos on their phone, and who have excellent eyesight, and who don’t care about having the best cameras. 100% legit market segment, but that Venn intersection is too small to be worth it.