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Comment by sosull

16 hours ago

The mini accounted for 3% of sales. Personally I’m a believer, and a buyer, but 3% isn’t a good number.

12 comments

sosull

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smokel  8 hours ago

By that logic a supermarket would sell only 33 items.

  • phoghed  13 minutes ago

    Only if they’re also the manufacturer of all of the products they sell, and they probably would in that case.

  • torton  8 hours ago

    Trader Joe's limited SKU model. They are also 4x more profitable than a standard supermarket per square foot of store space.

majormajor  12 hours ago

"Try a different smaller form factor every couple of years" is a reasonable strategy. First Mini, then Air. Supposedly they're gonna refresh the Air next year, we'll see. But even if they don't: we're well into the "keep phones 3 years or more" era of the smart phone. You don't need an exact match for every phone for everybody every year.

  • MYEUHD  10 hours ago

    > "Try a different smaller form factor every couple of years" is a reasonable strategy. First Mini, then Air.

    The iPhone air has a 6.5" display. That's bigger than the base iPhone 17 (6.3") and the iPhone 17e (6.1")

    You're probably thinking about the thinness of the phone. iPhone air is 2.4mm thinner than iPhone 17, but I don't think anyone is asking for that, as most people use a case which makes the phone thicker.

    • majormajor  8 hours ago

      Yeah, it's smaller in a different way than the mini was small.

      But the thinness isn't actually the appeal. The key thing is that it's a lot lighter. (And yes, a case adds weight as well as thickness. But if you start from a lower baseline, you still end up in a lower place.)

  • alex43578  11 hours ago

    But I think you do need some level of consistency to retain customers. Churning models, especially given Apple's otherwise-excellent retention metrics and mechanisms, seems like a self-goal by almost encouraging those buyers to switch after 3 years.

    If you bought an iPhone Mini or an Air, but that model is gone at T+3 years, that's a lot more likely to result in you looking to Android, than if you bought an iPhone 13 and want to upgrade to an iPhone 16/17.

  • jloawjelrjl  11 hours ago

    The Air wasn't "smaller", it was thinner in some areas and as far as I can tell just a pathfinder for a folding phone