Comment on Apple loses top phonemaker spot to Samsung as iPhone shipments drop, research company says
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 5 months agoSadly I don’t think even with all these they have released a decent high performance small phone. At least not to US market.
dustyData@lemmy.world 5 months ago
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.
kirklennon@kbin.social 5 months ago
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.
moon@lemmy.cafe 5 months ago
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
kirklennon@kbin.social 5 months ago
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.
dustyData@lemmy.world 5 months ago
We do. The smallest iPhones, back when the iPhone had three sizes versions were consistently the less sold, by a wide margin. They still had old new stock years after the production halted. Even the modern small phones specifically made to address that niche market, underperform and end up with unsold stock on hand, despite having small production runs to begin with. This is publicly available info you can find googling for a few seconds. There are extensive essays made by journalist that always start hopefully looking for the perfect small phone, and end up discovering that none are made because they don’t sell at all. There’s not enough people who want a small phone (and I’m one of those people) to even call it a niche market.
kirklennon@kbin.social 5 months ago
The smaller phones were not comparable models. They were a lower-tier product with fewer features. This contrasts with the regular and Plus/Max versions where it's very much position as the same phone in two sizes.