Comment by crazygringo
3 hours ago
> they failed to make phones that are convenient to carry.
I loved the iPhone SE and small phones generally, but at the same time I realize Apple's not failing at anything. They're giving the market the size people actually want. The smaller phones don't sell nearly as well. Most people prefer a bigger phone even if carrying it is less convenient.
I've just accepted my phone will be bulky now, so I double down and attach a magnetic wallet to it, and carry it in my hand or jacket pocket or bag rather than my pants pocket like I used to. During meetings it lies on the table rather then in my pants pocket. C'est la vie.
Maybe there's room in the world for a device people want, even if it's not the device the majority want? I mean I know Apple is just a small startup company with only a $4 trillion valuation, but maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
If each iPhone model served only 3% of total iPhone users like the iPhone mini did, you'd end up with 33 iPhone models
I don't get this logic. Putting aside that to get 33 different models you would come up with 5-6 different form factors, each of them on a distinct point in the tradeoff scale, why do you think that something is only worth doing if it can be put on an uniform supply-demand curve?
3% was the iPhone 13 mini? It sold the least of the 4 relatively small phones Apple introduced in 1.5 years.
How many Android phone models exist?
Good.
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If Apple didn't run such a closed ecosystem, other hardware vendors would step in and be happy to sell a form factor that 3% of the market uses.
I keep trying to use Andriod to get more choice on form factor, but one thing always brings me back to an iPhone: texting incompatibility. Apple has me locked into their ecosystem because I can't get a decent quality video texted to me.
As an Apple fan since the 90s who remembers how Microsoft abused its market dominance for decades, it's particularly ironic that Apple continues to use this technique against other companies.
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They made it, it didn't sell well. Last I checked zero Android manufacturers were still creating high quality small phones (<5.5"). The Android community has resorted to petitions like https://smallandroidphone.com
Some people definitely want it, but when not even one Android manufacturer will create a model when they can get 100% market share, it looks like there isn't enough demand.
>maybe they could just do one thing that isn't maximally profitable once in a while.
They tried that this year and called it iPhone Air
The iPhone Air was a turn in the wrong direction.
What people like me wanted was an iPhone 13 mini that's a bit thicker so it can have a bit more battery capacity. And with the 120 Hz PWM nausea fixed.
The iPhone Air has worse battery life. And it has a larger screen. And it's worse to handle one-handed. Coming from the 13 mini, it's not an improvement.
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I get you're referring to the profitability, but the iPhone Air is just thin, not small, which is where this conversation started.
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Right, forgot to mention it should also be somewhat practical.
I'm curious how well it is selling. Early on there was a lot of enthusiasm, but I haven't heard much since. I don't know if I'd want a phone with less battery life, but my understanding is the Air's battery is actually not much smaller than last year's pro?
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It felt more like: keep the size, reduce the battery life
Ya got me there.
You missed the part where he said "make a device people want."
I think it's possible this is a good summary explanation, but isn't this a bit like saying "We only make shirts in medium because it's what the majority wants."
I would switch from Android to Apple if this fixed this problem.
They are making 5 different iPhone models of varying sizes, features, prices.
They used to make the "mini" but that's because Jobs had taste and it's what he, specifically, wanted in his pocket. Now Jobs is gone and... no more mini.
But I'll keep my iPhone 13 mini going as long as I can.
I own an iPhone 16 pro, but I’m constantly thinking about switching to an iPhone 13 mini with an aftermarket battery conversion to make it last all day. The only thing that holds me back is that I can’t easily convert it to USBC.
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Shareholders would never ever be ok with a company not trying to be maximally profitable.
That's why Tesla stock tanked as soon as the FT wrote that "$1.4bn appears to have gone astray." ;)
https://www.ft.com/content/62df8d8d-31f2-445e-bfa2-c171ac43d...
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Not in Tim Cook land. If a product is profitable that’s not good enough, it has to be very profitable.
A CEO that maximises for shareholder value? Shocking.
I'm all for that when it comes to things like accessibility technology that allows people to do things they otherwise couldn't. But screen sizes? You can use a larger screen, you just prefer a smaller one.
What “the market wants” is a maximally addictive device. It’s a really low bar even if highly profitable. Bigger screens make it more exciting and addictive.
Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
My guess would be that all those people that wanted small phones had an iPhone SE and now all their data is locked into Apple's walled garden and that's why they will begrudgingly buy a larger phone, even though they would have preferred a smaller one.
In short: Apple can get away with ignoring what those customers want.
I mean, I would assume most folks who liked the SE still have one. The SE 3 just stopped production this year and should have several years of software updates left (the SE 1 just ended software support this year, 7 years after it was discontinued.
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Not hard to take your data anywhere you wish.
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> Just profoundly weird to me that small manufacturers can’t make small phones because they’re small and can’t pay for it, and large manufacturers can’t make it because…(checks notes)…they’re large and don’t want to pay for it even if there’s demand.
Large and small companies sell smaller Android phones.
It's very difficult to find something around 140 grams and 140x80 even giving them some slack about the thickness. The Samsung S25 [1] is about there but I currently still use an A40 [2] because of the size and weight. I'd give away a couple of cm of height. A zero bezel 120mm phone would be ok. 120 grams are a dream.
[1] https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s25-13610.php
[2] https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_a40-9642.php
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Can Apple lock-in those people who definitely want small phones by some prepaid arrangements which the users can't back out? That would be market working. Is there a reason why they don't do this?
That's a weird take. Large screens aren't primarily more "addictive", they're primarily more productive. They work as a better e-reader, a better text editor, better for watching a movie on a plane, better for reading maps, I could go on and on. (And if a company were incentivized to truly make an "addicting" phone, it would be Meta that would benefit from the social media ads, or TikTok. Not Apple.)
Large manufacturers can make them. But there isn't enough demand to make them profitable enough. It's not a question of whether they "want to pay for it", it's just simple economics. They're businesses, not charities. I like small phones, but I understand manufacturers are doing what's economically rational given market preferences and I don't blame them for it.
There are studies that show that engagement with smartphones is higher when the screen is larger. Seems like Apple's been doing their homework.
> However, a follow-up phantom model analysis using 10,000 bootstrap samples at 95% bias-corrected confidence intervals revealed that the overall magnitude of the hedonic path (i.e., LS→PAQ→AT→IU; B=0.14, SE=0.06, p<0.01) was larger than that of the utilitarian path (i.e., LS→PC→PEOU→PU→IU; B=0.07, SE=0.03, p<0.01) even though participants were given a task-oriented, rather than entertainment-oriented (e.g., gaming, movie watching), assignment during the experiment. This implies that users are likely to put greater emphasis on the affective dimension of the technology than on its utilitarian dimension, despite the practical, purposeful nature of the assigned task. Given that user affect (e.g., positive or negative feelings) toward a technology is typically attributed as the central characteristic of the technology (regardless of the accuracy of the attribution),55 the practical implication of this finding is that smartphone manufacturers ought to take full advantage of the positive effects of the large screen on PAQ when designing their products. However, the more challenging design implication is that the optimal level of screen size that does not jeopardize the anywhere–anytime mobility of smartphones should first be identified, since screen size cannot be indefinitely increased in the mobile context. Thus, the remaining question to be addressed in future research is the optimal size of the mobile screen.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4080862/
> they're primarily more productive.
But why are we needing a phone to be productive? And they were already a distraction from the world around us when they fit in a single hand.
I know I'm probably abnormal, but my phone is a phone first, camera second, and "work" device fifth.
As a society, our boundaries around communication and instant contact to anyone have collapsed. Now if you don't respond to a message within a few minutes, you get multiple follow ups. If you don't pick up the phone when a friend calls you, they don't leave a message, they text, then call again, then text again.
We've gone from being able to leave the house, and no one can contact us for a few hours, to no matter where we are people are trying to contact us. So they may be more "productive" with larger screens, but we never asked whether they SHOULD be more productive.
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There is a number of small Android phones, so apparently there is demand in that niche, and smaller companies can address it and make money.
But this is because Google is a software / service company, so it keeps Android open.
Apple is a hardware company, and always has been. They have a relatively narrow lineup of devices which they support for a very long time, compared to Android devices. So Apple are not interested in fringe markets; they go for the well-off mainstream mostly.
It's not that they can't. They want to make money. When given the choice between making more money and less money, they'll generally choose more. They think making a smaller device would make less money. The sales numbers for previous attempts back this up. There's an enormous fixed cost for developing a new model, and it's not worthwhile unless that results in enough additional sales. There's demand, for sure, but how much? They think not enough, and I suspect they know what they're doing here.
Can you write down the actual detailed argument?
Just opining that it’s weird can’t possibly be convincing against a consensus amongst all the large smartphone manufacturers.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
No - call it what it is. They are catering to the largest market segments and ignoring the smaller segments who desire smaller phones.
Reasoning as to why is another thing, but it doesn't negate the existence of the segment who does want one.
Much like there is a segment of the population who wants a brown diesel station wagon.
An Apple Watch with a cellular connection, paired with Airpods, fulfills some of the role of a small iPhone - you can make calls, listen to music, and even do some light texting if Siri likes your accent.
No camera => not a phone replacement for most of the market
I love my apple watch but I can safely say i've never done any of the above with it. It's too much of a pain to switch the bluetooth headphones to it and the screen is too small to do much actual computing with it. The fitness aspects are totally worth the money, though.
There is one, shame it’s 3%.
I don't think they even set out to make a small phone with the SE, they set out to make a cheap phone. They achieved that by reusing older generation iPhone tooling which just happened to be smaller, as was the style at the time. When they refreshed the SE line it too got larger as it graduated to using later generation tooling.
I don’t know what they set out to do, but the marketing material specifically emphasized the compact form factor. (I’m reluctant to call it “small”, because the iPhone 5 didn’t seem small to me at the time.)
Yall forgetting they literally made an amazing iPhone Mini that no one bought
I bought :( Loved the thing, but yeah batter life wasn't the best. Also noticed that app developers would sometimes not take into account the smaller viewport on the Mini, and so app views would sometimes look too squished or out of place. That 's a minor grouse though compared to the subpar batter life.
"iPhone 16e Sales Lag Behind SE Models"
Ooops ?
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/06/03/iphone-16e-sales-lag-be...
Looks like the market did like the SE size.
>Looks like the market did like the SE size.
That's not a compelling argument when the same chart also shows the iPhone SE 2022 lagging behind iPhone SE 2020, even though they have identical form factors.
Sure, but between the SE2020 and the SE2022 was the iPhone 12 line-up which included the 12 Mini
When the SE2022 came out, most people preferring smaller iPhones were already using either an SE or a mini, and the SE2022 didn’t offer much compelling reasons to upgrade from an SE2020. The SE2020, on the other hand, launched before the first mini, and after four years of waiting since the SE1.
Good point. Thx.
> Unsurprisingly, the primary reason identified for the iPhone 16e 's weaker debut is its higher launch price.
Adjusting for inflation, the SE (€479 in 2020) was €588 and the SE2 (€519 in 2022) was €567. The 16e is 699, a 25% increase.
Small phones (to an extent) are less expensive than larger phones to manufacture.
The thought that "Small phones are only more popular because they're less expensive" seems to willfully ignore that the phones are less expensive because their inputs are less expensive, because they're smaller.
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And in Germany, the iPhone 16e 128GB in white currently sells for €537 at "Netto Marken-Discount", a supermarket chain famous for its low price. "Marken-Discount" = "brand name rebates"
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IMO the e series is/could be used as an anchor to ratchet other phones higher in price.
If Apple produced an Iphone SE with battery life that lasted, by making it a little thicker, then people would buy it IMO. The problem with the small phones is they arecreated on the premise that they should be crappy phones.
Of course everyone has a different version of what they consider crappy but bad battery life has got to be at the top of most people's crap-o-meter
iPhone 13 Mini was as you say. In every way as good as the full size iPhone but small. I hear it was quite an engineering challenge. I love the thing. The people of earth did not buy it.
People did buy it though. Apple sold a non-zero number of iPhone 13 Minis. They simply decided that number wasn’t big enough.
While small iPhones don’t sell nearly as well as larger sizes, I suspect they are still a very profitable product as Apple keeps releasing them.
Not small like they used to be. Not like the original SE, nowhere even close. The options now are basically big, bigger and biggest.
Apple doesn’t have any small iPhone offering anymore since they discontinued the SE3.
The iPhone sales figures where probably a disappointment, for Apple. Had it been released by any other company it would have been viewed as a huge success. The sales numbers are just pretty poor, for an iPhone.
I think Apple has such high expectation to sales figures that even if a smaller iPhone comes in, even as the 10th best selling phone, that's maybe only 5% of all iPhone sales. Massively successful as a phone, millions of people bought it, but to Apple, the SE is a side hustle at best.
My daughters friends made fun of my iPhone SE3, they had never seen a phone that small.
Huh? They haven’t released a remotely small phone in years.
There was a 4 year gap between the iPhone SE1 and iPhone SE2, it’s been less than 4 years since the SE3.
It’s not clear if they decided to move just add E models to their lineup, or given up on SE models entirely.
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Mind that there is also a feedback loop: applications only work correctly on bigger phone screens.
That’s not completely correct. In particular, the mini resolution corresponds to the Display Zoom options on current iPhones, so applications are still expected to support them, not to mention that iOS will support the mini models for 2-3 more years to come.
In addition, the outer screen of next year’s iPhone Fold will be shorter than the mini, so applications really need to be flexible here.
They might technically support them, but no one tests them properly and they’re certainly not a good user experience. I’ve personally made apps where I have never tested them on such zoom levels if I’m perfectly honest.
Is it too big as a phone/SMS device? Yes. But as long as it's smaller than an equivalent digital camera or handheld gaming device or portable GPS it's still appropriately sized for how I mostly use it.
It’s not appropriately sized for one-handed use, unless you have large hands.
> They're giving the market the size people actually want.
Some people clear still want those small phones, just not enough for Apple's profit margins.
Considering the sheer ramp up for manufacturing at the scale of iphone sales, and how unpopular tiny phones are, it’s completely understandable they’re not interested in catering to the < 1% of users they’d gain by making a small phone. You have to remember lost sales only truely include people who literally leave the platform or never upgrade again instead of just grumbling and buying the new phone anyway.
Can’t really want a smaller modern iPhone if no one is selling it.
Foldables…