No iPhone Mini No More
Kuo says the 5.4-inch size is gone but there will still be four phones in total. It will just be a simpler affair: two high-end ‘Pro’ phones with 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch screens and two lower-end models with the same 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch sizes.
Before the 12 came out, I pondered quite openly whether the Mini was going to meet the market appropriately. It intuitively felt slightly off. Smartphone users like big screens and the Mini simply doesn’t deliver that. There’s been a lot of reporting around how the iPhone 12 mini has lagged behind the other iPhone 12 models in sales. It’s not an outright flop but it doesn’t seem to have performed up to Apple’s expectations either.
I continue to believe the Mini’s existence was largely motivated by concerns of price point rather than form factor. Apple needed a new phone to sell at $699 and it couldn’t match what it achieved with the iPhone 11 series this time around. For various reasons that probably involve OLED and/or dreaded 5G demons, the base model 6.1-inch iPhone price increased by $130 this year. So, the Mini was introduced to keep the $699 placeholder, as it were.
The news from Kuo backs up that theory. Apple doesn’t really care for the smaller size, they want the price points. By 2022, the components of the 6.1-inch model will have gone down and Apple will be able to sell it as the cheap flagship again. Moreover, the report alludes to the existence of a non-Pro 6.7-inch device. This new device SKU mean Apple will make the biggest iPhone screen size accessible to more people than ever. Using the current lineup’s pricing as a guide, the 2022 6.7-inch iPhone would be almost $300 cheaper than the 6.7-inch iPhone 12 Pro Max Apple sells today.