A new report out today claims that Apple's iPhone 12 mini accounted for just 5% of sales across the entire iPhone 12 lineup last month. That's really small.
Before the iPhone 12 lineup was locked in and confirmed we heard from tons of people who said they just wanted a smaller iPhone. But they wanted that smaller iPhone to also be a modern iPhone, with the latest chips, the latest cameras, and Face ID. The 5.4-inch iPhone mini was surely the answer. It had everything the larger iPhone 12 had, including some stellar cameras. So what went wrong?
I joined a Clubhouse room to discuss this very subject with YouTuber Vyyyper earlier today because he suspected that iPhone 12 Pro Max would still sell more units than iPhone 12 mini even if they were identical beyond the screen size. He might be right – I'm honestly not sure. But I don't think that's the right conversation to have.
Now *that's* something to discuss in a Clubhouse room.Now *that's* something to discuss in a Clubhouse room.— Oliver Haslam (@OliverJHaslam) February 9, 2021February 9, 2021
Comparing iPhone 12 mini with iPhone 12 Pro Max isn't really a fair fight because they live at opposite ends of Apple's price and screen size range. The iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 12 comparison makes the most sense, but again, I'm still not sure that's the point here.
The real question is actually two questions. Maybe three – I haven't decided yet.
- Regardless of how many iPhone 12 mini units were sold, was it enough for Apple?
- Was the market for iPhone 12 mini ever as large as the vocal voices on social media, YouTube, and elsewhere had us believe?
- Did the COVID-19 pandemic alter the market, moving it away from iPhone 12 mini?
So yes, there was a third point after all.
Starting with point one, it's important to remember that the number of iPhone 12 mini handsets sold doesn't matter to anyone other than Apple. We'll never know what Apple's forecast for iPhone 12 mini sales was, or whether the number of sales reached that forecast. Ultimately, it's the only thing that matters – is making sure small phone fans don't switch to Android enough to make the model worth shipping?
Next up, it's entirely possible that iPhone 12 mini didn't have the demand that we'd been led to believe it did. Plenty of people have been filling Reddit, Twitter, comment threads, and more to declare their love for small phones – so long as they had the specs of larger models. iPhone 12 mini delivered, and at a lower price than iPhone 12. But as tends to be the case, the minority is the loudest. People complaining are always louder than people who aren't. People who want something are always louder than those who don't. Did the noise generated by the iPhone 12 mini minority have us expecting a bigger splash than the one we saw? Did that happen to Apple as well? See point one above.
Finally, we have the pandemic. It's impossible to avoid because that's what makes pandemics, pandemics, but how much did this one change the way people saw iPhone 12 mini?
My reasoning is simple. People who want small iPhones want to be able to one-hand them when stood in line somewhere. They don't want to risk dropping them on the sidewalk or at the beach. But people aren't running those risks anymore and we aren't standing in line anywhere near as much. We're sat at home. Where larger iPhones make more sense because the risks of drops aren't as high and we're all sprawled out on the sofa. Could it be that the pandemic pushed people to larger phones than they might otherwise have chosen?
How did that eat into the – likely already small – market targeted by iPhone 12 mini?
I don't know the answer to any of these questions. But I'll round out with this – the report that caused all of this? It's from Counterpoint. Not Apple. Just remember to take those numbers with a pinch of salt.
