Less than a month before the TNW 2022 convention in Amsterdam: your tickets now!→
In recent days, a new one called SmallAndroidPhone has been hanging around on Hacker News and Reddit.
The site created by Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky offers a wonderful little Android phone.
How to use push notifications and annoy customers
It’s a story we’ve heard countless times: Many other people love small, rugged Android phones, but there are plenty of options. Apple released a small iPhone two years ago, but several reports suggest there may not be an iPhone 14 mini. .
So what does Migicovsky want? Simple: An uncompromising Android phone with a screen of less than 6 inches.
Ideally, it should be the length of an iPhone mini with a wonderful camera and flagship processor. You are willing to pay a maximum value of $700 to $800 for anything that fits the bill.
He preferred to convince Google — or any other phone maker — to make such a phone for compact phone lovers.
But he has an argument: if no company does it and gets 50,000 followers on the website, he will start a new company to make a compact phone.
“I have a very explicit set of skills and industry relationships that I have acquired over the course of a long career in the hardware industry. I will use them in our usual quest to get the best little Android phone. If no one else ends up in construction one and enough other people sign up. . . I’ll have to do it myself.
It will be difficult to be a phone company that focuses only on small phones. Earlier this year, I wrote about the fact that, despite gathering other people on the web to order a compact phone from time to time, sales figures don’t paint. a positive image.
When I spoke to research firm Counterpoint at the time, I was told that the market for those devices had grown from 81% of the overall market in 2018 to just 10% in 2021.
Analysts recommend that this is due to battery-intensive generation, such as 5G chips, which makes larger phones with higher capacity more attractive. Also, since many other people use their phone as their number one computing device (think of things like entertainment and gaming), phones with more area are more in demand.
Therefore, creating a mainstream hungry for compact phones will be a challenge for the company. If you produce devices in smaller quantities, ordering portions for production and repair becomes expensive, especially when it comes to high-end components.
Another challenge would be deciding the time between iterations. If you don’t sell millions of devices, it wouldn’t be possible to release a new style every year.
A rough search on GSMArena’s phone search tool for Android phones with a screen of less than 6 inches, a release date of 2021 or later, and a price tag of $400 or more, gives me three results: the Sony Xperia 10 IV, the Asus Zenfone 8, and the Cat S62.
Only one of them, the Asus Zenfone 8, can be called a compact flagship. I used the phone last year and enjoyed it. But I don’t know if Asus will launch a follow-up.
Migicovsky commented in his blog post that Apple has sold more than 10 million iPhone minis, which is a smart number for a small business, but not significant for Apple. Still, if a company values trillions of dollars, it can experiment with other sizes of gadgets and get away with it.
For a new business targeting small phones, this wouldn’t be the case.
Despite this, it does not pretend to be a boutique phone company. Fairtelephone, founded in Europe, sells a few thousand devices in a year (with the durability and longevity of the device as premium features) and makes a profit. Also, do not launch a new style both one and both years.
Therefore, there is an option for miniature phones to thrive.
For better or worse, corporations should bet on a compact flagship-style Android phone.
In fact, major phone brands will be interested in generating a high-end phone of this length if a mid-range or low-end style is successful.
Hell, analysts’ knowledge suggests that the iPhone SE dominates the small smartphone market at 24%, and that’s basically because it’s a reasonable iPhone, and not a small one.
Although other people in the media and in online comment sections have expressed a preference for compact and flagship phones, it turns out that there is a gap between this thirst and actual sales figures.
Really, corporations will have to figure out that there is a market for small phones, and one way to appeal to consumers would be to make a reasonable model.
In the global Android, the Google Pixel 4a was a great example of this: it had a 5. 81-inch screen, a spectacular camera and a price below $ 400. It is possible that the device has set the global on fire.
What we want are some corporations that make compact phones with a dash of brand features and a price. If this is successful, it can cause the revival of small phones. I just wish we could see that day soon.