And I kind of get it. Philosophically I want a small phone. Realities of age and eyesight forbid.
The market is basically people who don’t read or watch videos on their phone, and who have excellent eyesight, and who don’t care about having the best cameras. 100% legit market segment, but that Venn intersection is too small to be worth it.
I think the problem is that the product folks don't actually listen to the market. They read Jobs' biography and are convinced that they will tell their users what product they will like and that they will see the light later on.
The sad reality is: they are not Jobs (and even he was not faultless). So, we get Mac like Windows interfaces, we get mail clients losing features, we get AI in every single app you see, etc.
Just my 2c.
And if you’re convinced that most people don’t like most products… why don’t you make a fortune building what people actually want?
In my case, because it's the only option in some situations.
For eg, I wanted a phone that has an unlockable bootloader and a decent/Qualcomm CPU.
I'm immediately down to Motorola and OnePlus.
If I want future proof performance, I'm down to the OP 15 only.
Yes, I have RSI today, but with any luck that can go away. However, a Vivo will not get a BL unlock tomorrow magically.
Apple is very good at market research and understanding users… but not perfect. I think they genuinely believed the Air would sell a lot more than it did.
And “millions” is not necessarily a lot. Apple sells 250 million phones a year. A SKU that sells 3 million is a distraction with much lower ROI against R&D than a mainline phone. It takes just as much engineering to create and as much manufacturing to produce, so fixed costs are spread among many fewer units.
Am old. Am experiencing presbyopia. Am still very much tied to my mini on the default font size. When I can't read something I just pinch/zoom. Meanwhile it's easy to hold & use in one hand while walking down the street, and fits into normal sized pockets.