The customer isn't always right, but, the customer also didn't ask for glued-in smartphone batteries, removing the MicroSD slot, or removing the headphone jack.
Or maybe analogies just don’t work, and it’s “you want it thin and waterproof? We can do that, but we’re gluing the battery in.” No, customers didn’t ask for such batteries, but customers did ask for other things that require a permanently installed battery.
The Fordian "faster horse" doesn't have much merit, though. What customers wanted was a faster cart. That's also exactly what they got.
What they wanted out of horses was for them to be easier to store, and cheaper and less labor intensive to maintain. They got bicycles and motorcycles.
They definitely didn't.
> They like the way slimmer phones look.
Do they, or was that marketing that worked? Did they really want thinner phones that were too large to easily fit in a pocket?
For the most part, I think they do. Sony has been offering smaller (4.6", usually) phones for years. They're a little thicker than average, have reasonably competitive specs, fairly stock Android, unlockable bootloaders, SD cards and good cameras. Many of them were even waterproof.
That's pretty much the feature set a large segment of the tech-savvy community has been asking for. How many of us have one?
Meanwhile, phones larger than the current average tend to have strong sales. I think it's mainly driven by people using their phones for an increasing number of tasks they previously would have done on a PC.
Note that the point is customer behavior in buying does not match their stated desires. I own a fairly small phone that is waterproof (to 1 meter), but everybody I know thinks I'm weird for having an off brand phone.