Apple doesn't appear to have plans to revive the iPhone mini

People say they want one. Apple makes one. People don't buy one. Apple stops making one.

Rinse. Repeat.

On a serious note, if Apple makes one they need to commit to making one for more than just a year. People are on multi-year upgrade cycles, and even people who might want one might be off-cycle and unable to buy at that point in time.

Secondarily, they also need to make sure it has adequate battery life, something that's plagued mini phones for years now.

My wife (and many of her friends) value the size of the mini far more than battery life, etc. She is totally unwilling to consider updating from her 12 mini and there are many more people who feel the same. A new model could sell many millions, although not nearly as many as larger iPhones. 

hmlongco said:
People say they want one. Apple makes one. People don't buy one. Apple stops making one.

Rinse. Repeat.

People did buy it, one dealer I know told me that they sold more iPhone Minis months for months than any other non-Apple or Samsung brand model. Sometimes it's not entirely clear why Apple ditches a product; all bad sales rumours are only unconfirmed speculation. One other products I totally loved was the 17" MBP which was killed but luckily reintroduced as the 16" MBP. Maybe the same will happen to the Mini but maybe not... with that product I have the suspicion that they feel they can't get the margin that they want because people see it as a lesser instead of a more premium product... it's funny to see how that "oooh, but thinner is better and more premium" iPhone Air will play out.

prof said:

hmlongco said:
People say they want one. Apple makes one. People don't buy one. Apple stops making one.

Rinse. Repeat.

People did buy it, one dealer I know told me that they sold more iPhone Minis months for months than any other non-Apple or Samsung brand model. Sometimes it's not entirely clear why Apple ditches a product; all bad sales rumours are only unconfirmed speculation. 

Please. Stop your descent into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole. It's really pretty simple: Apple is a publicly owned, for profit company that is in the business of making products that sell well enough to generate sufficient profit to justify keeping them in the product lineup. It keeps making the products that earn their keep and stops making the ones that don't. End of story, The Mini would still be in the lineup if it sold in sufficient numbers, and the story of what one dealer told you for a product that sells globally is absolutely meaningless. Do you think Apple is happy about EOL'ing a new product after just two cycles? Absolutely not. It's questionable if they even made back their costs for research and development of the Mini, costs for tooling and production, design, marketing, etc. after just two years. This isn't to say that the Mini didn't have its fans, and a lot of them, just not enough to make it worthwhile to keep around. Notice also that no major Android manufacturer, even though they seem to run with every new gimmick feature they can dream up, has stepped in to produce a truly premium mini phone--there's no high end Galaxy or Pixel Mini. That's further confirmation that a sufficiently big market for a premium mini phone is simply not there. It's also worth noting that Apple's low-priced and smaller iPhone SE was always the worst selling model in the whole iPhone lineup. 

I have my 12 mini and will buy a flip foldable next. Big phones make me feel ill