Who is the iPhone Air for?
I first published this "post" a few days after iPhone Air debuted. I'm often wrong about these kinds of things. By "these things", I mean what other people want. For example I thought the iPhone Mini would have a strong following, but I was obviously very wrong about that. And I thought I might be wrong about this one too, as it was widely praised by enthusiasts (not that that's ever an indicator of popularity) and many of the replies to my original post were similar. But since my broken clock was right this time (iPhone Air made up ~3% of sales, a KeyBanc Capital Markets survey for investors determined there was "virtually no demand for iPhone Air", and Apple has since halted production), I want to immortalize it, so here's the content of that original post:
Maybe I'm just out of touch, but I don't understand who this is for, and I think it's going to flop.
First of all...who is asking for thinner phones?
Secondly, the price. This is not an Air SE. This thing is only $100 less than a full-fat iPhone Pro, and $200 more than iPhone base (which is a particularly good value this year).
And what do you get for that price?
- 2 fewer camera lenses than the pro, and 1 fewer than the base
- Titanium Frame, I guess? Apple seems to change their mind every year about whether aluminum or titanium is better.
- Less powerful processor than the base model
- Less battery life than even the base model (this was often cited as the shortcoming of the iPhone Mini)
- Slower charging speeds than all other models
Thirdly, Apple goes on and on about the light weight of this device, but the single lens iPhone 16e is only 1% (2 grams) heavier, but $400 cheaper.
Looking at a performance test, the base iPhone 16 predictably outperforms the iPhone Air, even with it's "Pro" processor:
You can put all the fancy processors in the world in this thing but it won't matter if you don't have the capacity to cool them.
Are people really clamoring for thinner phones so badly that they'll spend more money for less features?