First came the Mini smartphones. The iPhone 12 and 13. If you believed everything you read online you’d think they were a massive success. But take a moment and think, when was the last time you saw one in real life? I’ve seen 2, not including my own iPhone 12 Mini, since they were released up until the current date. On the other hand, how many iPhone 12 and 13’s have I seen? Countless. The were a commercial failure. I am surprised Apple even bothered to release a 13 Mini after the flop of the 12 Mini. The vocal minority online would have you believe there are rafts of people that would run out a buy a new phone if only Apple would release a new mini phones, but the numbers just don’t reflect that. The sales wouldn’t even break even.
Then came the thin phones. First the Samsung S25 Edge, then the iPhone (17?) Air. Unbelievably slim yes, but why? Who asked for this? I can’t think of anyone I know in person that wanted an unmanageably large smartphone, just thinner and with lots of compromises to get to that point.
When you strip the marketing away the slim phones are budget versions of their flagship counterparts. They have smaller batteries, inferior cameras and questionable cooling performance. All in the name of being thin. Even the thin argument falls to pieces when you lay them on a table. They wobble all over the place because the camera modules protrude almost doubling their thickness in some places.
I’ll ask the question, who are these phones supposed to be for?
I don’t think even Samsung or Apple know the answer. With slowing innovation, forced longer update promises and the maturation of the market people are holding onto their phones for longer. These big companies NEED you to buy their devices more frequently and they’re getting desperate.
Apple vision, another desperate attempt to sell an additional product, and another failure.
I’d even argue that folding smartphones are another example of this. Selling a product that even today shouldn’t be out of the prototype stage with failing hinges, cracking screens and occasional fires (Pixel 10 fold I’m looking at you). No-one asked for a square inner screen that’s the wrong aspect ratio to get anything done, no-one asked for a phone that the screen cracks in half if you open it too many times. I’ll say it again, they’re getting desperate.
What we are witnessing is market saturation and late stage capitalism, with a few monopolies playing out in real time. There is nowhere left for them to grow into, and yet shareholders demand they must. If they stagnate, they die. Samsung can fall back on their other consumer electronics and appliances, and Google can focus on advertising and their digital services, but what about Apple? They’ve failed to make strides in digital services, in the shadows of Netflix and Spotify. They’ve failed at AI. Their Mac’s from 2020 are still more powerful than the average person needs, and their phones have essentially been unchanged since the iPhone 11.
It sounds strange to say about the third biggest company in the world, but I think Apple might be in trouble.
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