Comment by MostlyStable | Hacker News Reader

Comment by MostlyStable | Hacker News Reader

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I'm honestly curious about the "market keeps rejecting it" part. Yes, they sold far fewer units than the other models....but did they really not make money? I have made variations on this comment many many times. I completely buy that the opinions about phone form factor and features expressed on HN/reddit/online, and my own idiosyncratic preferences probably even more so, represent somewhat of a niche, and that your median phone consumer isn't interested in what we/I want. But the phone market seems like it's so large that it should be able to support a lot of niches! A tenth of a percent of the total market (~1,300 million in 2023 according to [0], 0.1% of which would be 1.3 million phones) should be totally viable as a business! I get that, maybe for Apple there is opportunity cost. Having more product lines adds overhead, and if the profit margin on those extra product lines isn't enough higher than the main lines to justify that overhead, they kill it. But why doesn't some smaller company (so yes, this mostly applies to Android) try to steal that fractional market share? I simply don't understand why it doesn't work to the point that now, when the market is so much larger than it was in the past, we have so much less hardware diversity.

[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/263437/global-smartphone...

> should be able to support a lot of niches

Apple's whole thing is that they don't do niches. Support a select few versions of select few products very very well is the whole MO

Why does the Vision Pro exist then? What is that if not a niche? What about the iPad Mini or for that matter the Mac Mini, which if not for the recent AI craze would have been cut in the next few years for sure.

Apple can absolutely do niche products. Just not this one I guess.

The Vision Pro was meant for early adopters of a new mainstream thing. (Yes, I also thought this would fail.)

The Mac Mini is an entry level product I see quite lot of people pick up. How is it niche?

>>The Mac Mini is an entry level product I see quite lot of people pick up. How is it niche?

It's a stationary computer that requires a standalone monitor, keyboard and mouse/touchpad. People just buy a laptop instead, a dedicated "computer" space at home is increasingly a thing of the past. And especially now if you can get the Neo for very similar money I have no idea why you'd buy the mini if your entire computer use is Facebook and maybe some word editing from time to time.

Yeah and the production numbers from the start seemed to indicate that Apple knew it wouldn't be extremely popular.

FWIW, I bought one knowing this, and have zero regrets. Amazing hardware, it's the best personal display on the market. I use it for the majority of my movie watching.

They are beachhead products, aren't they? Plant your flag in case it gets big.

Phones got big.

The Vision Pro (and the folding iPhone Duo) involve developing a lot of underlying technologies that will be useful in currently popular or potential future product lines, even if the market they serve themselves is niche.

> Why does the Vision Pro exist then?

They are thinking that VR headsets will not be niche products in the future

The apple watch was very niche when it came out as well, but their intention was absolutely to make a major product line

Curious decision to make a phone for the 2% of foldable users, then.

> but did they really not make money?

I'm sure they made money. But that's not the right question to ask, in my opinion. The right question is did they make as much or more than their internal rate of return (IRR)? Perhaps the smaller iPhones (I had one) do not so they cut the product line. Or maybe they over-purchased some components and figured they could make a phone or two out of them.

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