Everyone knows the iPhone name, but their idea of the breakdown of models is probably somewhat vague—something like best, cheapest, and maybe something in the middle. So when it comes time to get a new phone, or if they’re instigated by an ad, they’re going into the store or website with the intent of getting one of the iPhones that they’re aware of. It’s not that easy to grab someone‘s attention with a different product at that point. When I go into an Apple store, I pay attention to almost everything because I’m very interested in everything. But in almost any other store, if I know what I want, then I go in with blinders on, get my thing, and get out. I don’t pay attention to ads or other products. I think that’s probably how it is for most people when they go to buy an iPhone. Not all, but probably most.
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Other iPhone Mini future
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Everyone knows the iPhone name, but their idea of the breakdown of models is probably somewhat vague—something like best, cheapest, and maybe something in the middle. So when it comes time to get a new phone, or if they’re instigated by an ad, they’re going into the store or website with the intent of getting one of the iPhones that they’re aware of. It’s not that easy to grab someone‘s attention with a different product at that point. When I go into an Apple store, I pay attention to almost everything because I’m very interested in everything. But in almost any other store, if I know what I want, then I go in with blinders on, get my thing, and get out. I don’t pay attention to ads or other products. I think that’s probably how it is for most people when they go to buy an iPhone. Not all, but probably most.
I think any additional ads for iPhone 12 Pro Max would have been offset by carrier ads for $0 iPhone 12/mini.
Could there be cave dwellers that saw one Pro Max ad, became disgusted by the size, disconnected from the world, and never learned about the iPhone 12/13 mini? Those individuals would have really, really wanted a 5.4-inch device. Multiply that scenario a few million times. Because that's one of the few scenarios where iPhone 12 mini could have sold appreciably better.
Apple's level of marketing makes that situation very unlikely. Quite frankly, you'd have to deliberately ignore info to not understand the product stack. You're spending at least $700. You're not buying a roll of toilet paper.
"All I know is I want iPhone. Shut up, don't say anything to me, I won't look at the display units. Just hand me the iPhone whatever model."
You'd have to ignore the silhouettes of different iPhone models. Apple forces online customers to choose between iPhone 12 and iPhone 12 mini before they can check out. You'd have to ignore the Compare tool on the Apple website.
You'd have to ignore the physical display with all four iPhone 12 models.
I suppose I have higher faith in people’s capacity to not pay attention than you do. I should correct myself though, I don’t know if most people wouldn’t notice the Mini in stores/online, but I believe enough to possibly make a noticeable dent in sales. Again, not saying advertising parity would have made the Mini a hit, just maybe a significant difference to the prevailing conclusion that almost no one wants the Mini.
Also it’s not just about noticing. iPhone advertising helps instill an image of technological prestige that entices the buyer—something they wouldn’t really get from simply seeing the Mini amidst other models while on their way to buy another phone.
I probably used a too extreme version of a buyer’s attitude not noticing the Mini. I wouldn’t say it’s that aggressive, but more a passive ignoring. When you think you basically know what a company offers and what you want, you simply don’t make any effort to look around and notice what else you could buy. Even if what you would actually want is sitting in front of you, if it’s among other things you don’t want, you won’t notice it. A bunch of iPhones sitting on tables is seen as one grouped item—it takes proactivity to notice any individual phone within the group.
True, $700 is a lot, but there are even more expensive things (computers, TVs, furniture, cars) that I think a lot people buy in the same way. If they’re familiar with the offerings, and especially if they bought the same thing before, they aren’t very attentive to new products. In general there are so many options given to us that people have decision fatigue.
This is of course a matter of conjecture and probably can’t be proven either way.
It is odd how iPhone mini didn’t sell better based on all of the points in this thread: it was a tremendous value, offering all of the same features and functionality as its larger counterpart for $100 less with plenty of marketing behind it. iPhone 12/13 customers had to choose between the mini and the standard sizes. I suppose that consumers looked at the price and wanted to spend more for the standard size, thinking it was lesser by being smaller or that they were getting a better value with the standard device by comparison.
iPhone 12/13 mini are underrated because of how well Apple executed the design, and the form factor held a lot of surprising inherent benefits.
Anecdotally I’ve seen far more iPhone mini devices in the wild, with everyone from my sister and her boyfriend having iPhone 13 mini to my best friend’s cousin happily owning one—which he thought he spent $1,000 on. Then I’ve seen it used by Vitamin Shoppe employees to girls in breweries and flower exhibits, quite frequently.
It’s my observation that iPhone 13 mini is being used more frequently by people that are using their iPhone out in the world than even iPhone 13. Potentially poor sales figures for the newer Plus-sized iPhones, which had an underwhelming design for iPhone 14 Plus IMHO, could hopefully mean that Apple brings back the mini form factor with some sort of innovative twist.
iPhone 12/13 mini are underrated because of how well Apple executed the design, and the form factor held a lot of surprising inherent benefits.
Anecdotally I’ve seen far more iPhone mini devices in the wild, with everyone from my sister and her boyfriend having iPhone 13 mini to my best friend’s cousin happily owning one—which he thought he spent $1,000 on. Then I’ve seen it used by Vitamin Shoppe employees to girls in breweries and flower exhibits, quite frequently.
It’s my observation that iPhone 13 mini is being used more frequently by people that are using their iPhone out in the world than even iPhone 13. Potentially poor sales figures for the newer Plus-sized iPhones, which had an underwhelming design for iPhone 14 Plus IMHO, could hopefully mean that Apple brings back the mini form factor with some sort of innovative twist.
I've bought a new 256GB 13 mini but won't open it until after the event on September 12th and we know more about pricing and which models are being discontinued.
I would bet the mini sells better than the plus. Bring it back Apple!
It actually did.
Kuo: iPhone 14 Plus Pre-Orders Worse Than iPhone 13 Mini, Product Strategy 'Fails'
The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus have seen "bad" pre-order results, indicating that Apple's positioning of the two new standard models...
www.macrumors.com
It actually did.
Kuo: iPhone 14 Plus Pre-Orders Worse Than iPhone 13 Mini, Product Strategy 'Fails'
The iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus have seen "bad" pre-order results, indicating that Apple's positioning of the two new standard models...
The mini failed miserably in terms of sales. You can check CIRP data below for U.S. sales., which already has a greater portion of mini buyers.
Pre-orders are probably one the worst ways to predict overall sales. Mainstream consumers in the market for a regular iPhone 14/Plus do not pre-order. They replace their device as needed or whenever their contract is up.
Fewer Buyers Choose the Fanciest iPhones
In the June 2023 quarter, we observed an interesting change in a long-time trend. In the US the average selling prices for iPhones basically keeps going up. For the first time since we began tracking US-WARP (weighted average retail price) in 2017, when Apple stopped disclosing its own Average...
cirpapple.substack.com
The 14 Plus outsold the 13 mini by about 55% according to panel shipments. We know Plus is here to stay as Ross Young confirmed it's staying for iPhone 16 and 17.
No axe to grind on this either way but only one friend of mine has one. I've never noticed another in the wild & think I'm quite aware. weird!
I would happily pay iPhone 15 Pro Max price for this Mini. My iPhone 12 Mini is by no means a perfect phone, but it has the perfect form factor. Now with even smaller bezels and especially more energy efficient 3nm node, it would really make sense to release another Mini.
I also believe that the iPhone Mini ranks among the worst-marketed Apple products of all time. Absolutely nobody apart from me even thought about buying it, and yet pretty much everyone who has held my phone has fallen in love with its form factor. Even my dad, a diehard Linux/open source guy who's been hating on Apple since the 80s, felt the need to ditch his giant Android phone to get the iPhone 13 Mini after I convinced him to check it out.
Have you seen the post #128 just above? It pretty much dispels a poor marketing theory.
Apple have learnt it the hard way that a handful of people saying “I would happily pay iPhone 15 Pro Max price for this Mini.” does not translate to lots of minis being sold.
I am a mini 12 user too, so I do sympathise, but I also think that even if Apple upgraded mini to an A16 chip, more RAM, DI and USB-C to boot in a few weeks, it would just repeat a 12 and 13 mini pattern of rather low (by Apple standards) sales. I mean I would happily go for it and you might too, but the masses just like them iPhones bigger. 😋
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Thank you. I’m a fan as well and so is my mom but we are a small contingent of users.
It really doesn't. Most people don't buy iPhones through the limited paths that Apple did market the mini. Many people would have to drive or travel more than an hour to reach an Apple Store, and never go to the website to research getting a new phone.
Most people absentmindedly stop into their local Verizon or AT&T store after seeing some promotion on TV or along the sidewalk, where a sales rep swoops in and starts asking the usual probing questions. Regardless of whether the customer wants a more reasonably sized phone, the sales rep (who's worried about losing some commission on returns and keeping the sale price as high as possible to maximize their commission) actively steers the customer away from the mini, so they don't even get a chance to try it.
Customer ends up being told they can buy a $1200 iPhone Pro Max for $5/mo after they trade in their old phone for some inflated monthly credits and sign their life away to the carrier for 36 months. They don't know what they just bought -- they were just told it is "the best iPhone Apple makes," which is subconsciously affirmed by its name ("Pro Max") and highest MSRP -- and they leave the store having purchased an overpriced and oversized phone that doesn't align with their needs at all. This is what we mean when we say that the mini wasn't marketed well -- it was put up against a phone called a "Pro Max". How would the average uninformed buyer not assume that a "Pro Max" is empirically better than a "mini"?
This happens every day at phone stores and authorized retailers like Best Buy all over the US. A couple million sales later and now all of a sudden the Pro Max is a big seller, even though half the people who have it don't even know what a ProMotion display is and have never once knowingly used the telephoto lens.
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Ok, so who would be interested in changing that upselling pattern, as both Apple and authorised retailers are obviously interested in selling more expensive products = generating more profits?
However, if we look at the post #135 above, we will also learn than SE (a way cheaper model) still sold better than 13 mini in the same sales period. How would you explain that?
Apple could fix it by releasing a Pro version that's 5.4" or 5.6" with the ProMotion display, premium build materials, and either replace the ultrawide with the telephoto lens or include both. I say 5.6" as a proposed compromise, as I know battery size and cameras were contentious reasons that people argued that they couldn't make a "mini Pro." Give it a little extra room, but keep it around the body size of the iPhone 6/6s/7/8.
But most importantly, drop the connotative "Max," "Plus," and "Ultra" modifiers and just call all of them "Pro" -- just like how MacBook Pros are sold. A 5.6" Pro, 6.1" Pro, and a 6.7" Pro.
The SE was released before the 12 mini. Many people who bought it never knew that a better small phone was coming until after they had purchased the SE. There are posts all over the place from 2021 with people bemoaning "if I had known..." I blame Apple's "secrecy" for that. They should be more transparent about what's coming once they've decided.
I don’t know if this has already been mentioned, but the SE 2 had come out just 6 months earlier. Many who had been holding out for a smaller iPhone bought the SE 2, not knowing that a mini was upcoming. There were many who commented here in this forum that if they had known they’d have waited for the mini, but now that they already bought the SE 2 they wouldn’t bother. Apple somewhat sabotaged themselves by releasing the SE 2 first.
Those were just the initial preorders. The Plus picked up significantly after that: https://www.macrumors.com/2023/03/21/iphone-14-plus-popularity-vs-iphone-13-mini/
They were rumours a while ago that Apple were indeed experimenting with 5.7 and 5.8” screen sizes for their next SE or what not, yet the latest SE rumours tend to spin around 6.1” size, too bad!
As for your 4.7” SE coming before 12 mini and thus sabotaging the latter theory, it does not work out, as if we go back again to the post #135 above, we will see that even 13 mini was outsold by SE, so those “year after” upgraders probably wanted either the cheapest, or LCD-screened iPhone, or both.
Yeah I’m not arguing that it would have saved the mini, but it was a contributing factor. And the audience I was talking about that didn’t buy the 12 mini because they already bought the SE 2 would also mostly not buy the 13 mini for much the same reason.
But what were the volume of each? This is showing percentage of total share, which is good for comparing products sold next to each other, but not so for products sold during different time periods. In other words, it's completely possible for the 13 mini's sales June 2021 to April 2022 to be higher in raw numbers than the 14 Plus from June 2022 to April 2023, but percentage graphs over two different time periods won't display that. I'll admit that that's probably not the case -- but it's not proven by these graphs.
I've never heard of this DSCC, but the quality of their "report" is lacking, at best; and maliciously misleading at worst. It doesn't even mention what the percentage 13 mini panel shipments are. They're comparing the 14 series' panel shipment percentages to a nonexistent number; yet, proclaiming that the 14 Plus "appears to be doing a lot better than the iPhone 13 mini". There's no way to earnestly reach that conclusion with the information provided, but they proclaim it anyway.
You make it sound like it’s the 1980s, where nobody has access to the Internet, manufacturers nor carrier websites exist, consumers rely on salesmen completely, and every one of these uninformed folks somehow have money and an excellent credit rating.
If your scenario were true, the regular iPhone 11, 12, and 13 would have never sold at all. Who’s buying a plain iPhone 11 when iPhone 11 Pro Max is only “$5” more! Guess what, the cheapie iPhone 11 was the world’s best selling smartphone in 2020.
Regardless of the quibbling over sales numbers, the point stands that Apple and their ecosystem "partners" (carriers and their authorized resellers) did a huge disservice to the mini models that led it to those sales numbers. All it proves is that carriers would do their best to steer potential customers away from a more reasonably priced and reasonably sized phone in order to (successfully) upsell them into the most expensive models that they can't afford anyway, save for 0% interest financing and 3-year commitments.
The 0% interest financing is another topic for another day, but it's safe to say that access to free financing on these devices is what has driven up the demand and continually increasing price for "Pro" and "Pro Max" models. If everybody had to pay out of pocket for a Pro Max, I guarantee you'd have single-digit share instead of 36%; and consequently, Apple would need to bring the price back under control and accept less profit.
Anyway, the point is that among those who were afforded the opportunity to consider a 12 mini or 13 mini, few wanted a gimped, reasonably sized phone. Most people I know who were considering the mini ended up going with the 12 Pro or 13 Pro for the better cameras and display, and the name -- after all, it's a "Pro!" Put that hardware in a <6.1" device, call it a "Pro" too, and you'd have a winner.
The iPhone 11 model tiers made the most sense: a "small" Pro, a large Pro, and a mid-sized non-Pro. Rather than a "mini," a "nothing" that nobody except enterprise bulk buyers wanted, and two large and heavy Pro/Pro Max models; to maximize revenue while selling phones that were desirable to the entire population they should have made two Pros, one being less than 5.9" and the other being 6.5" or 6.7", and one 6.0-6.1" non-Pro.
The 0% interest financing is another topic for another day, but it's safe to say that access to free financing on these devices is what has driven up the demand and continually increasing price for "Pro" and "Pro Max" models. If everybody had to pay out of pocket for a Pro Max, I guarantee you'd have single-digit share instead of 36%; and consequently, Apple would need to bring the price back under control and accept less profit.
Anyway, the point is that among those who were afforded the opportunity to consider a 12 mini or 13 mini, few wanted a gimped, reasonably sized phone. Most people I know who were considering the mini ended up going with the 12 Pro or 13 Pro for the better cameras and display, and the name -- after all, it's a "Pro!" Put that hardware in a <6.1" device, call it a "Pro" too, and you'd have a winner.
The iPhone 11 model tiers made the most sense: a "small" Pro, a large Pro, and a mid-sized non-Pro. Rather than a "mini," a "nothing" that nobody except enterprise bulk buyers wanted, and two large and heavy Pro/Pro Max models; to maximize revenue while selling phones that were desirable to the entire population they should have made two Pros, one being less than 5.9" and the other being 6.5" or 6.7", and one 6.0-6.1" non-Pro.