Hmm don't think I buy this, at least in Apple's case.
They have a monopoly on the operating system, which is what people really want with both the iPhone and the Mac.
People will still spend $3000 on a 15" MacBook Pro that they hate (because of the ridiculous touchbar) because it's the only high spec'd laptop available with macOS.
There's no way for consumers to tell Apple "we prefer no touchbar" purely with sales data because they aren't given the choice.
I think that same factor is huge with the iPhone. I have bought multiple 4.7" iPhones now, all of which I hate because of the size, but it is the smallest (correction: smallest premium) phone Apple makes/made. So looking at the data, it looks like I love the new iPhone size because I bought it, but the reality is I had no choice if I wanted to keep using iOS and didn't want to deal with a horrible experience performance-wise from aging hardware.
Apple's a special case, but we're not seeing the various Android vendors (nor the cellular carriers) giving any appreciable retail space to small devices either.
They're largely relegated to Walmart's "I need a cheap burner phone" prepaid phone department.
If I market a new device that’s larger and give it better specs how can the smaller device survive? Its only feature is its size but its specs are always behind and getting further behind. The consumers will drift from it as the spec disparity increases.
From a business standpoint it seems bigger is better, but it’s the better display/storage/battery/camera that’s driving the consumer not the size.
The Unihertz Jelly and Atom kickstarters were pretty succesful. I have only used the Jelly, but its fine for a low end small phone that can display webpages/maps when necessary.
If it had better battery life I would not want anything else. But I do not play games / read or browse on my phone. I just want GPS/maps text and calls.
What are you basing that on?