V8Guitar yeah, you make lots of great points there.
I suspect what the OP was looking for was a compact unit, on par size-wise with the Iridium and the new Walrus Audio ACS1 amp & cab simulator. But instead of 3 fixed amp models, make it a profiler-player. No need to have the ability to profile, since you can just buy amp profiles; the ability to profile would require more hardware jacks, increasing the size/cost of the unit. I agree with the OP that there's a market for this class of product--just look at the popularity of the Strymon Iridium. And what is the Iridium's main shortcoming? Only 3 amps. If there were a comparably-sized Kemper Mini that was as easy to use that could play any profile, and the price was similar, who would rather have the Iridium instead?
But is such a product viable? It's probably difficult for a smaller company that doesn't have the resources that, say, Line6 does, whose parent company is Yamaha. Night and day difference there in personnel resources and manufacturing ability. The talented folks at Kemper could design such a product, but getting the BOM cost (Bill of Materials) down so that it would be profitable is another story. And I doubt they could manufacture it in Germany and be competitive with companies manufacturing in China. Kemper GmbH already seem over-burdened with the ability to sustain existing products (the whole saga of how long the desktop editor Rig Manager took to come out after initial product launch).
V8Guitar, I know what you mean about "the KPA is already developed." Reusing the KPA code in a new product, to the extent possible, would be a cheap route to crank out a new product. That's the story of the Kemper Stage, which they did a great job with IMO. There are some differences, but they're relatively small. But once your form factor (ID) changes too much, there will be lots of re-design to port things between the two platforms. It's easier to not have to port every feature from the big platform to the small platform. We see those challenges happening with Fractal--the FM3 firmware always lags behind its big brother AX3 in terms of time-to-market and feature set.
The challenge in making a new, smaller product like a Kemper "Mini" would be managing the difference in feature set, which is dictated by the changes in the form factor. If Kemper makes a pedal-sized "Mini", then there's no way from a user interface (UI) perspective to just plop the existing KPA code base in. You have to completely rework the UI. The Industrial Design (ID) would be totally different--you'd have to decide how many buttons to take out, the type of screen to use, etc. If they use different DSP chips (sometimes required to reduce heat generated in small electronic products), that means "adapting" code (in the trade we call it "porting code") from the existing KPA--that's a massive undertaking. A new product is always more work, but the primary means of minimizing development efforts is to cut features.
If they did something that had say 80% feature parity to the KPA (similar to how the HX Stomp has many features of its big brother Helix), that's a huge development cost, just in firmware. And it has to be compatible with the desktop editor. However, if, as the OP suggested, Kemper decides to make a minimalistic Kemper "Mini" that has 10% of the feature set of the KPA, that's a much easier product to produce. You "save" minimize development costs by making a minimalistic unit. Assuming identical hardware, the product with fewer software features is easier/cheaper to develop/maintain by comparison. It reaches market faster. There's a point of diminishing returns where there's enough features for 90% of people.
I agree with ya V8Guitar that stereo setups are over-rated. But there is still a market...and people are even selling stereo patches for AXE FXIII, Helix, HX Stomp, etc. Practical or not, there seems to be market demand for stereo amps.
Most of this discussion is wishful thinking on my part. I'm betting that most Kemper users want the next-generation "Kemper 2" before the "Mini," and in order to stay competitive with the likes of the Neural DSP, I hope the "Kemper 2" is exactly what they are working on.
