Comment by marcos100
5 months ago
And can you give a number on the "vocal minority"? Because companies usually sell what customers want and if the majority of the phones on the market is big, then that's what people want.
5 months ago
And can you give a number on the "vocal minority"? Because companies usually sell what customers want and if the majority of the phones on the market is big, then that's what people want.
Hmm, or they fabricate the demand so they can fulfill it. SUVs anyone?
As an outsider, how do they do that?
I am guessing
- put best specs in largest devices (fomo-ish, status symbol) - put highest cost on largest devices (status symbol) - um? not even create smaller devices would also do it I guess?
I mean, the suv case is easy:
- market SUV’s.
- stock dealerships with mostly SUV’s
- complain that nobody is buying non-SUV’s (they can’t, it’s only suv stock),
- stop selling non-SUV models.
- complete transformation into indeterminate, indistinguishable car brand no.3564.
1 reply →
The problem isn't that this hypothetical vocal minority is completely imaginary, but that consumers will repeatably gravitate toward the biggest and most glitterliest product. Only few realizes it's not what they want.
The problem isn’t that the majority of phones are big, it’s that virtually all are big and heavy. There is no modern, properly supported smartphone with 4.x” or 5.x” diagonal or below 150 grams anymore.
In all frankness, I think this is the legandary "if people wanted a faster horse..." statement of Henry Ford -- consumers don't always know what they want, and I know quite a few who couldn't confidently answer the question "why did you buy a 6,5" iPhone?" with anything else but "I have used iPhone all my life and this is the size they sell", meaning the consumer doesn't choose much, the choice is to buy a newer iPhone. The simplified argument that goes along "phones are getting larger because consumers want larger phones" is indeed only that -- a very simplified way to look at it. There's much more going on there.
It's very similar to smart TVs. Yes, most people do prefer smart TVs, but vendors use it very successfully to sell inferior displays (poor color, poor contrast etc), to compensate and to pull more selling margin, since that's how the consumer functions (being utterly unable to quantify display quality for an uncalibrated TV). Anyway, I am digressing -- the point of my comparison is that it's complicated and not nearly as simple as "consumers want larger phones / TVs with slow menus and shitty picture as long as there's Netflix in there".