[TACD]

My pet theory about why the Minis sold poorly is that the 12 Mini was released just a few months after the SE 2; I suspect a lot of the would-be Mini purchasers had just bought an SE 2 instead (not knowing the Mini was just around the corner), and are also not a demographic interested in upgrading their phone every year.

[mrweasel]

Didn't the SE models sell notoriously bad as well?

There are always a bunch of us who wants a smaller phone, but the sales number indicates that we are the minority.

To some extend I also think it explains the increasingly thin phones. With the increases in screen size, they need to make the phones thinner, otherwise it would feel like a brick in your pocket.

[torstenvl]

No. Even the 2022—which was intentionally nerfed—sold 15-20 million and ranked in the top ten best-selling phones.

[mrweasel]

Wasn't eight of the ten best selling phones iPhones? It was even beaten by the iPhone 14 line up, which was only for sale in four out of the twelve months, while the SE was available for all twelve.

You're right that it was good sales figures for a smartphone, but not great for an iPhone.

[mrheosuper]

The SE3 has bad selling because it is exactly the same SE2 with upgrade SOC. People buying SE phone mostly don't care about SOC performance.

[HumblyTossed]

I always point out that the minis were a billion dollar product. Most companies would DIE for a billion dollar product.

[NetMageSCW]

Apple is like CBS in that regard - shows with viewers that other networks would kill for get canceled at CBS because they expect more. Apple doesn’t get as much ROI on phones that sell in the low ten millions or low single digit percentage of the market. But I do think they could put those phones on a slow refresh cycle and teach e.g. Mini or Plus users to wait for the next release and stack that market together over a few years to be worthwhile to them.

[brightbeige]

My theory is rather about battery life:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44588733

[port11]

My pet theory is that having to charge the phone twice a day was a deal breaker. We wanted small, not "impossibly thin" and always dead.