charlesn

Toroidal said:

As noted above, nobody else is addressing that market, which Apple could have to itself - and do it at a premium. Apple is no stranger to high margin low volume markets. 

Apple DID have the "mini" market to itself and at a premium price to boot. So what's your theory about why they abandoned it? Do you think the meeting in Cupertino went something like this:

TIM: Hey, guys, this Mini is selling pretty well for us, the margins at its selling price are great, so tell you what: let's just cancel it so we can piss off the buyers who love the Mini. Show of hands for that idea? Great, it's unanimous. Let's cancel after the 13 Mini. Yeah, I know that means we won't even make back our R&D, tooling and marketing costs for that model, but it's worth it to piss off Mini buyers!" 

Listen: I get why people who want a smaller form factor phone are really upset that one is no longer available. I tried a Pro Max for a year and hated it, couldn't wait to get back to the smaller form factor of the regular Pro. What I don't get are the wild explanations and conspiracy theories about why the Mini was cancelled when the obvious and only sensible answer is that a Mini form factor wasn't a good enough business for Apple to stay in it, even when it had that whole market of buyers to itself. 

mattinoz said:

charlesn said:

prof said:

hmlongco said:
People say they want one. Apple makes one. People don't buy one. Apple stops making one.

Rinse. Repeat.

People did buy it, one dealer I know told me that they sold more iPhone Minis months for months than any other non-Apple or Samsung brand model. Sometimes it's not entirely clear why Apple ditches a product; all bad sales rumours are only unconfirmed speculation. 

Please. Stop your descent into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. It's really pretty simple: Apple is a publicly owned, for profit company that is in the business of making products that sell well enough to generate sufficient profit to justify keeping them in the product lineup. It keeps making the products that earn their keep and stops making the ones that don't. End of story, The Mini would still be in the lineup if it sold in sufficient numbers, and the story of what one dealer told you for a product that sells globally is absolutely meaningless. Do you think Apple is happy about EOL'ing a new product after just two cycles? Absolutely not. It's questionable if they even made back their costs for research and development of the Mini, costs for tooling and production, design, marketing, etc. after just two years. This isn't to say that the Mini didn't have its fans, and a lot of them, just not enough to make it worthwhile to keep around. Notice also that no major Android manufacturer, even though they seem to run with every new gimmick feature they can dream up, has stepped in to produce a truly premium mini phone--there's no high end Galaxy or Pixel Mini. That's further confirmation that a sufficiently big market for a premium mini phone is simply not there. It's also worth noting that Apple's low-priced and smaller iPhone SE was always the worst selling model in the whole iPhone lineup. 

Your assumption here is it was a sales problem but evidence says otherwise. 

Anytime you'd like to present your "evidence," I'm ready! My evidence is based on a few simple points: 1) Publicly owned, for profit companies don't cancel profitable products that are selling well. 2) Research companies like CIRP that purport to track sales of specific products reported that the Mini was not selling well compared to the rest of the iPhone lineup.  3) No major phone maker is offering a premium mini phone--if the market for such a phone was there, either Samsung, Google or Apple would pursue it. 

M68000 said:

i remember a few years back using a Nikon z6 camera and doing 4k, not 8k video, it struggled to keep up and had heat issues.  Will an iPhone be able to do 8k video without overheating \melting?  

iPhone has had 4K recording for a decade now--it was introduced on the 6s in 2015. So if your Nikon z6 was choking on 4K a few years ago, that's Nikon's problem. I'm sure that after 10 years of shooting 4K, the iPhone Pros will be ready to shoot 8K without a problem, other than the storage required. How useful 8K video will be is another question entirely, beyond specific applications for which the higher resolution will have real benefits. For general consumer applications, I'm doubtful. The visible difference between 8K televisions and 4K televisions will not be nearly as great as the difference between 4K and HD/1080P. And even THAT difference wasn't huge if you were viewing 8+ feet away with average screen sizes. The bigger benefit of 4K has been HDR/Dolby Vision. It's also worth noting that most subscribers to the 800 lb. gorilla of streaming services, Netflix, aren't even getting 4K yet, they're still stuck with HD. 4K Netflix is only available with its most expensive plan, which is really a travesty. 

hmlongco said:

On a serious note, if Apple makes one they need to commit to making one for more than just a year. People are on multi-year upgrade cycles, and even people who might want one might be off-cycle and unable to buy at that point in time.

Secondarily, they also need to make sure it has adequate battery life, something that's plagued mini phones for years now.

The Mini was available for two model years and Apple is famously driven by its vaunted customer data, so I'm sure its sales projections for the Mini took into account upgrade cycle timelines and that not everyone who might want one would be willing to buy it during that period. When you consider what a painful and expensive decision it had to be to cancel the Mini after just two years, you can only conclude that the phone so badly missed its sales projections, with no sign that things would improve, that Apple decided to take the hit rather than continue with it. For a new product to get axed this quickly is a VERY rare occurrence for Apple. Honestly the last one I can remember was the infamous "toilet seat" iBook which lasted only two years from July 1999 to August 2001. The original HomePod lasted three years. And although there was only one model ever released of the "trash can" Mac Pro, it remained in the lineup for six years. 

prof said:

hmlongco said:
People say they want one. Apple makes one. People don't buy one. Apple stops making one.

Rinse. Repeat.

People did buy it, one dealer I know told me that they sold more iPhone Minis months for months than any other non-Apple or Samsung brand model. Sometimes it's not entirely clear why Apple ditches a product; all bad sales rumours are only unconfirmed speculation. 

Please. Stop your descent into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. It's really pretty simple: Apple is a publicly owned, for profit company that is in the business of making products that sell well enough to generate sufficient profit to justify keeping them in the product lineup. It keeps making the products that earn their keep and stops making the ones that don't. End of story, The Mini would still be in the lineup if it sold in sufficient numbers, and the story of what one dealer told you for a product that sells globally is absolutely meaningless. Do you think Apple is happy about EOL'ing a new product after just two cycles? Absolutely not. It's questionable if they even made back their costs for research and development of the Mini, costs for tooling and production, design, marketing, etc. after just two years. This isn't to say that the Mini didn't have its fans, and a lot of them, just not enough to make it worthwhile to keep around. Notice also that no major Android manufacturer, even though they seem to run with every new gimmick feature they can dream up, has stepped in to produce a truly premium mini phone--there's no high end Galaxy or Pixel Mini. That's further confirmation that a sufficiently big market for a premium mini phone is simply not there. It's also worth noting that Apple's low-priced and smaller iPhone SE was always the worst selling model in the whole iPhone lineup.