Niel Cybart, writing for Above Avalon:
The best way to understand why Apple is releasing a new 4-inch iPhone in 2016 is to look at the changing iPhone user base. Apple is now selling iPhones to an installed base of more than 550 million users with a multitude of wants, needs, and desires regarding their smartphones. Apple is making a bet that it is time to expand iPhone development to three different screen sizes in order to appeal to the 20% of the user base that prefer single-handed iPhone usage over larger screen options. Releasing a new 4-inch iPhone would be an admission by Apple that the only way to maintain a vibrant iPhone upgrade cycle is to expand the iPhone line.
Terrific analysis. Be sure to look at the iOS vs Android price pyramid graphic to understand the holes in the existing iPhone market coverage:
By targeting the premium segment of the market, Apple spent years developing a loyal iPhone base of hundreds of millions of users willing to spend an above average amount of money and time on their iPhones. This trend stood in stark contrast to the vast majority of smartphone sales taking place at the low-end of the market where consumers used their phones very differently.
Apple has long eschewed that lower end of the market. Will a 4-inch phone be inexpensive enough to help Apple expand to the lower levels of that pyramid?
Hanging on to my iPhone 5 waiting for a new 4-inch iPhone.
Really want Apple Pay, but hate the larger sizes. My wife loves her giant iPhone 6+ though.
Apple understands that it needs to keep the 4″ form factor in their line for whatever reasons they decide . But they need to update the tech for security issues if nothing else.
Though I understand the “one-handed use” angle…I’ve always used my phone two-handed, except in rare circumstances. I just like the way the 4″ size fits in my hand and my pocket, in a way that the 4.7″ size does not.
There are already 3 screen sizes: 4-inch iPhone 5S, plus 2 sizes of iPhone 6. Nothing has changed. They won’t expand anything by updating the 4-inch phone, same as 6S update did not expand anything.
I’m sure it will be a new way to reach the low end of the market, just like the iPad mini was before it. 🙂
“Will a 4-inch phone be inexpensive enough to help Apple expand to the lower levels of that pyramid?”
Somewhere in Apple HQ is an employee tasked with modelling the impact that altering the minimum price of an Iphone would have on sales and on profits.
There is no way that Apple is going to lower the minimum price of an iphone in the developed world (it’s already lower in places like China and India where Apple keeps old models around an extra year or two beyond what they do in North America), unless that employee’s models say doing so will not have a negative effect on profits.
People don’t want the gorram smaller iPhone because it’s cheaper, people want it because they don’t want to be carrying around a ‘giant-ass phone’.
This isn’t the “LOW END” of the market, christ on a crutch why don’t they get that?