2. You don’t want to carry a big iPhone and you have a Mac/iPad nearby anyway for anything complicated so a big phone is unnecessary.
The second case should motivate wanting eg their ‘pro’ cameras in the small phone but the first case motivates making it cheap and low-margin. You can also imagine a world where apple markets a mini phone as also being an optional companion to a bigger phone, but they already have the watch for that.
But they could have both things in two separate models.
Wasn't the 11 pro the size of the mini / SE? I don't remember whether there was an 11 mini, but it seems to me that 11 pro / SE were exactly that, and the current minis / se are the size of the 7/8/se/11 pro.
I the time I couldn't justify buying a new phone, but I remember late last year, when I figured I could start looking, I was possibly contemplating getting the 13 pro, for the camera. But when I saw how huge it was, I immediately abandoned the idea.
first gen SE is smallest, and both it and the 2nd/3rd gen SE are smaller than the 11 pro (though the latter is closer, only 0.2" smaller in both length and width).
The iphone 12 mini and 13 mini are both smaller than the 2nd/3rd gen SE but larger than the 1st gen SE.
The 2nd/3rd gen SE is the same size as the iphone 8.
I used a first-gen SE up until last year and thought it was great. I know it was super old, but it being really small was one of the biggest selling points of it for me.
1. Cheaper iPhone
2. You don’t want to carry a big iPhone and you have a Mac/iPad nearby anyway for anything complicated so a big phone is unnecessary.
The second case should motivate wanting eg their ‘pro’ cameras in the small phone but the first case motivates making it cheap and low-margin. You can also imagine a world where apple markets a mini phone as also being an optional companion to a bigger phone, but they already have the watch for that.