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iPhone 14 Plus Facing No Delay Nearly a Week After Pre-Orders Opened Amid Reports of Low Demand

EugW said:
The mini sold less than 5% of all iPhones, meaning that they were easily outsold by older models too. A mini Pro model would likely sell even worse.

Almost nobody except some Macrumors diehards want minis.
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Because they kneecapped the mini and marketed it poorly from day one. If Apple wanted to sell a pile of minis they'd market the size as the "perfect" size for most people (it is) and put a smidge larger battery in it to get it 20+ hrs of playback.

The problem is the profit margin is probably way smaller than a "Pro" model. Let's not even get started on how terrible the 13 color palette was - you can have blue or blue, Dirty White, Red, or (3 months later) Generic Green. Apple held onto "small" screens for a long time and marketed it well. 5.4" edge to edge with great pixel density is not small for daily tasks. Throw in 120hz and a real camera and you'd have a device you could easily market to the masses.

Everyone who has held my 13 mini has commented on how much they like the size over their 6.1" phones. I don't buy that people wouldn't purchase it, but I do believe that Apple didn't want to sell the mini in large quantities because of the margins.
 
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oldtime said:
I mean they made real good money on it, no? 12% of your phone sales coming from a scrap-heap dated looking phone that's so cheap to produce is a win for Apple. They made it enticing enough for people to buy enough of them to cut a nice profit.

Make the mini enticing and people will buy that too. I would love a 5.4" phone but I've passed on the Mini the last two years. For an extra 100 bucks the regular 12 and 13 were simply much better phones in every way but size. So of course most people opted for the better value options.
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No, not really. The iPhone SE has by far had the lowest profit margin of any of the iPhones.

Yes it's cheap to make, but it's also sold way cheaper than the other models. Hence the much lower profit margins.
 
The iPhone SE has low margin and would not be possible at its current price without R&D already effectively paid off. Apple uses it mainly to get switchers from Android/new customers and rope them into the ecosystem. The services are where the $$$'s at.
 
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Is a mini Pro really possible? The battery life would be horrible, no?
 
boak said:
Is a mini Pro really possible? The battery life would be horrible, no?
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The mini battery life is indeed horrible. A model with a somewhat bigger battery would still be bad for battery life, just not as bad... unless it's big enough that it's no longer a mini. Having Pro features would make it even worse, and raise the cost even more.
 
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AppleTO said:
Not a huge surprise when the pro model is only $100 USD more.
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It's something of a surprise to me, because this is targeted to those who care about a large screen, and the obvious upscale item is not the 14 Pro, but rather the much more expensive 14 Pro Max. I had the Plus on my Apple bingo card as a moderately strong performer.

Also, I'm not yet sure that won't be the case, since its delivery date currently puts it at a disadvantage compared to other phones that understandably are generating more pre-order excitement because of their quick availability.
 
boak said:
I would say 5.8" and 6.5" for the regular and the Plus might even do it. Then let the Pro Max be 6.7".
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How about just a 5.6-5.8 inch and a 6.5 inch? Make both Pro. Like the 11 Pro line.

No one would NOT buy the 6.5inch iPhone because they want a 6.7 inch iPhone. But some wouldn't buy the 6.7 and would have bought a 6.5 inch because 6.5 inch was just at the end of what is then too big for them.

And for those other's an older SE and SE+ for around 500$ (maybe a 13 lineup in form of the SE with a little less features but latest chip).

That would make more sense. Two Pro sizes with a smaller and bigger model and two SE sizes with a smaller and bigger model but MUCH cheaper. I believe you would get many more customers with this lineup. But all models should be very different (size or price). Not 100-200$ cheaper for same size etc.
 
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boak said:
Is a mini Pro really possible? The battery life would be horrible, no?
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I wouldn't have thought so without dropping one of the cameras. Even then the Pro cameras are so much larger you would be challenged for space with the battery.

You could probably make it work with 2 cameras and a thicker design.
 
Maybe they dropped the Mini to sell more Pro Max phones because it’s the most profitable. If you were considering the Mini or tried one before, the ”regular” 6.1” phones seemed massive. Now, 6.1” seems normal and 6.7” feels like the upgrade. And since it’s only $100 more, it feels logical to pay that to get a bigger screen.

I still think the Mini feels the most “iPhone”. I definitely think it will be back because the 14 isn’t really an upgrade anyway.
 
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Phones have basically plateaued for years now. Do people need to be upgrading ever year or two years? No it hasn’t been that way for a while now.
3-4 year cycles seem more normal nowadays with normal people.
not much change and previous years phones are still great. What’s there to upgrade for a fancy dynamic island? I’m good
 
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oldtime said:
It's overpriced and underpowered. Best value Apple products always sell well (the regular iPad, the MBA, etc). That's why the SE has been a hit as a small phone and the better in almost every way Mini has not. Good vs poor value for the money.

It needs to be, more obviously, the cheap new iphone, only without being limited in any meaningful way.
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How is it overpriced or underpowered? It had the same A15 as the regular iPhone 13 for $100 less. It was already literally the same power for a lower price.
 
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tomtad said:
I wouldn't have thought so without dropping one of the cameras. Even then the Pro cameras are so much larger you would be challenged for space with the battery.

You could probably make it work with 2 cameras and a thicker design.
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Dropping 1 camera would then make it not a Pro 🥲
 
1663253938203.png

I had no problems single hand typing on my case free iPhone X, for some reason the 12 Pro is just a smidge too wide
 
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EugW said:
The mini sold less than 5% of all iPhones, meaning that they were easily outsold by older models too. A mini Pro model would likely sell even worse.

Almost nobody except some Macrumors diehards want minis.
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It's a losing battle here mate. It's best to just ignore such a viewpoint. The iPhone Mini Pro crowd seriously believes that the Mini failed because of a lack of a Pro model, even though there is no reason whatsoever to believe such a thing. They are just sad their fantasy iPhone never became a reality. We both know the iPhone Mini Pro is a more niche device than the already niche iPhone Mini.

And I'll just say this again because I'm reading some of these comments in this thread and laughing. The iPhone 14 Plus is not a failure. The thing isn't even shipping for 3 more weeks and all the attention is on the Pro models which will start to be available tomorrow. The Plus will do just fine once it's actually available in stores.
 
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Apple_Jacks said:
Because they kneecapped the mini and marketed it poorly from day one. If Apple wanted to sell a pile of minis they'd market the size as the "perfect" size for most people (it is) and put a smidge larger battery in it to get it 20+ hrs of playback.

The problem is the profit margin is probably way smaller than a "Pro" model. Let's not even get started on how terrible the 13 color palette was - you can have blue or blue, Dirty White, Red, or (3 months later) Generic Green. Apple held onto "small" screens for a long time and marketed it well. 5.4" edge to edge with great pixel density is not small for daily tasks. Throw in 120hz and a real camera and you'd have a device you could easily market to the masses.

Everyone who has held my 13 mini has commented on how much they like the size over their 6.1" phones. I don't buy that people wouldn't purchase it, but I do believe that Apple didn't want to sell the mini in large quantities because of the margins.
Click to expand...

The biggest complaint was that it was too expensive, even at $100 less than the regular iPhone

The Pro Mini phone you describe would need a larger battery to support 120Hz and the larger camera, which means that it would need to be thicker and heavier.
 
KPOM said:
The biggest complaint was that it was too expensive, even at $100 less than the regular iPhone

The Pro Mini phone you describe would need a larger battery to support 120Hz and the larger camera, which means that it would need to be thicker and heavier.
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Most of the carriers had promotions either offering the mini for less than $200 on payment plans across 36 months, or outright gave them away for free with trade-ins and new lines. Even at $200 total cost, that's $5.55/mo for 36 months in a world where people are shelling out $45+/mo for Pro Max models. There's no reason to believe that people thought $5.55/mo was too expensive when they were happy to pay more than 8x that for a Pro Max.

No it wouldn't. The ProMotion display uses less power by dynamically scaling down to 10 Hz most of the time, than a display running at 60 Hz all the time. The camera is a camera. It uses the same amount of power when in use as any of the cameras that the mini has now.
 
tomtad said:
True, however throw in the Pro 48MP regular and zoom lens and that would be perfect phone for me. An iPhone mini almost-Pro.

One think I always missed going from the iPhone X to 12 mini was the zoom lens.
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I have a 12 mini too and the zoomed pics are not great.
 
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