Sorry, small phone lovers: the iPhone 12 mini was Apple’s sales failure in 2020

Bad news for smaller phone lovers: the iPhone 12 mini sold poorly compared to other phones in the iPhone 12 line – so much so that analysts wonder whether Apple will remain committed to the design of smaller phones in the future.

A data company called Counterpoint Research found that the iPhone 12 mini accounted for only 5% of the company’s total smartphone line sales in early January. And JP Morgan analyst William Yang told Reuters that screens less than 6 inches now account for only 10% of smartphones sold across the industry.

Counterpoint data is not the first to tell this story. Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) released sales of the iPhone 12 line in detail last month. They found that the iPhone 12 Pro and 12 Pro Max accounted for about 20% of sales for the larger iPhone 12 line during the launch window, while the 6.1-inch iPhone 12 non-Pro accounted for 27%.

But they also said the iPhone 12 mini “probably disappointed Apple”, with only 6% of sales over the measured period – very close to the number that Counterpoint shared a few months later.

Wave7 Research, another research firm, also estimated that the iPhone 12 mini accounted for 5% of iPhone 12 sales in the United States. And Flurry Analytics has declared the mini the least successful iPhone launch in the past three years.

While all of this data shows that the iPhone 12 mini underperformed, it doesn’t tell us why. According to CIRP data, the also small iPhone SE performed slightly better (probably due to its significantly lower price), but it still did not represent a large share of sales:

So while it is possible that the slow sales of the iPhone 12 mini are partly the result of cannibalization by the cheaper SE, small phones are clearly not doing well overall.

When we looked at the iPhone 12 line, we named the iPhone 12 mini as a favorite. There are a multitude of smartphone users who see easy one-handed use as extremely important, but these numbers indicate that they are a minority.

There are many reasons why small phones are less popular now. On the one hand, users are consuming more rich media content. Many people watch both TV and movies on their phones as they watch on their TVs now, and some social media platforms like TikTok and Snapchat are focused on advanced media that may be more enjoyable for some on a bigger screen.

People are doing heavier work on smartphones now, too, as evidenced by robust versions of apps like Word and a plethora of video and photo editing apps dominating graphics on the App Store. (It’s a similar story on the Android side.)

Despite these trends, the iPhone 12 mini looked like it could be a moment of triumph for lovers of small phones – a chance for small phones to prove their viability in the market, so that this march towards ever larger screens could stop, at least for those who don’t would you like those bigger screens.

However, these sales figures make the future of one-handed smartphones look even more obscure than before.

List image by Samuel Axon