this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2024
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No one big releases a small phone because no one buys them. Not even the people who whine and complaints about no small phone offering buys the small phones when they're offered. It's way too niche a market to break even.
Except we don't have any good data to say why. Do people buy a bigger flagship over a smaller model that has older technology? Yes, but the only thing we can say with confidence from that is that people want the latest technology. The closest comparison we can make is Apple's Max/Plus and non-Max/Plus versions, which offer essentially the same model in two sizes. The smaller size consistently sells better. It's also cheaper. Does it sell better because it's smaller or because it's cheaper? Probably both, actually. But as long as nobody offers a small flagship (since Apple stopped making them entirely and switched to larger flagships), nobody can say for sure how well they'd sell.
The phone makers can say for sure because they have years of market and sales data on them, and a huge amount of r&d lol
No, that's precisely my point: they don't because no major phone manufacturer has simultaneously sold both a large and compact flagship. And when there are legitimately comparable models in different sizes, the smaller size fairly reliably sells better.
That's not true. Apple sold a mini version for several generations and consistently the mini was always the worst performing version sales wise. Samsung made a mini version of the Galaxy S as well for a while. It also underperformed.
The "mini" lineup was never truly comparable to the flagship product. The specific deficiencies varied with the year but they were all missing an entire camera, and cameras are one of the single most important features of an iPhone.
The mini phones were significantly and arbitrarily gimped to mark them as a distinctly (and quite visibly) lower tier phone.