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A phone that you can easily grab with one hand? Crazy conversation.
Samuel Axon
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The iPhone 12 mini. Size aside, it looks like the iPhone 12.
Samuel Axon
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It’s pretty thin.
Samuel Axon
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And yes, it still has a notch.
Samuel Axon
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Comparison of iPhone SE (left) and iPhone 12 mini (right).
Samuel Axon
Bad news for fans of smaller phones: the iPhone 12 mini has sold poorly compared to other phones in the iPhone 12 line – bad enough to make analysts wonder if Apple will remain committed to designing smaller phones in the future.
A data company called Counterpoint Research found that the iPhone 12 mini only made up 5% of total sales for the company’s smartphone line in early January. And JP Morgan analyst William Yang told Reuters displays smaller than 6 inches now account for just 10% of smartphones sold in the industry.
Counterpoint data isn’t the first to tell this story. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has broken down the sales of the iPhone 12 line in detail last month. They found that the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max accounted for around 20% of the sales of the larger iPhone 12 lineup during the launch window, while the 6.1-inch non-Pro iPhone 12 accounted for 27%.
But they also said the iPhone 12 mini “probably disappointed Apple” with just 6% of sales over the period measured – pretty close to the Counterpoint number shared a few months later.
Wave7 Research, another research firm, also estimated that the iPhone 12 mini accounts for 5% of iPhone 12 sales in the United States. And Flurry Analytics said the mini was the least successful iPhone launch in the past three years.
While all of this data shows that the iPhone 12 mini underperformed, it doesn’t tell us why. According to CIRP data, the equally small iPhone SE fared a bit better (likely due to its significantly lower price), but it still hasn’t accounted for a huge chunk of sales:
CIRP
So while it’s possible that the sluggish sales of the iPhone 12 mini are in part the result of cannibalization by the cheaper OS, smaller phones are clearly not doing well in general.
When we looked at the iPhone 12 lineup, we named the iPhone 12 mini as our favorite. There are a host of smartphone users who see easy one-handed use as essential, but these numbers indicate they are a minority.
There are many reasons why small phones are less popular now. On the one hand, users consume more rich multimedia content. Many people watch TV and movies on their phone as much as they do on their TV now, and some social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat focus on rich media which can be more enjoyable for some on a bigger screen.
People are also doing more intensive work on smartphones now, as evidenced by the robust versions of apps like Word and a plethora of video and photo editing apps that dominate graphics on the App Store. (It’s a similar story on the Android side.)
Despite these trends, the iPhone 12 mini seemed like a moment of triumph for lovers of small phones – a chance for small phones to prove their viability in the market so that this march to ever larger screens could stop, at least for those who don’t. ‘t want to these larger screens.
But on the contrary, these sales figures make the future of one-handed smartphones even darker than before.
Ad image by Samuel Axon
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