Who is a target audience? Most Apple users wont spent time in postproduction and colour grade their footages. Pros will stay with dedicated technology made for cinematography.
Think of the sheer amount of ‘content’ (used pejoratively) these days. That is not being made by traditional cinematographers. It’s videographers, maybe with a pro camera, but maybe with an iPhone, or maybe one pro camera and an iPhone or two for backup. Think of weddings or similar as well, massive demand. Apparently everything needs to be video so why not this. As an aside, aforementioned director shot our wedding as a favour to us (in 2019) on a 4K lumix and an iPhone.
It’s the camera you have on you, innit.
Guerrilla film-makers will probably love it - iPhones aren't really noticed and are allowed in plenty of places where serious cameras aren't.
I can also see it being useful for some specific commercial ad work, I've seen people specifically shoot on phones to get the relatable phone 'look' for specific shots.
https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/steven-soderbergh...
Basically everyone who wants to make films but doesn't have money for a real pro camera.
Also, compression doesn't lessen the effect of color grading.
Most people won't notice the difference that is true but this is true even for real cinema. Most people don't notice or care about things such as shooting on real film, aspect ratio etc.
The why is that people who create care about these things. Color grading and post shot creative manipulation, these things benefit from extra data. If I can't recover shadows or pushing white balance results in banding, those things are going to still be visible on a phone by myself and the small amount of people who do care.
Btw are you a photographer or a video editor?
Yes, I do audiovisual production and postproduction for living.
then there are tons of semi-professional (semi wrt. photo/video capture, not wrt their job) people on platforms like YT, TickTock and similar which do only use their phone for capturing, they probably love this
lets also not forget the people which aspire success on YT, TickTock and others
similar a lot of hobby photographers don't bother with dedicated technology anymore so they might like that, too
and the people which don't carry around a laptop (e.g. on holiday trips or even business trips) but might want to send slightly improved photos from there isn't small either
anyway I guess the main selling point is like "not locking poor" for thos with confidence issues or more likely bad luck to live in less healthy social circles
It's about being perceived as the best phone.
Most Lamborghini buyers don't drive it at top speed either.