“iPhone SE is an exciting new idea — we started with a beloved, iconic design and reinvented it from the inside out. The result is the most beautiful and powerful phone with a four-inch display in the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “iPhone SE is packed with a stunning four-inch Retina display, advanced 64-bit A9 chip with M9 motion co-processor, longer battery life, 12-megapixel iSight camera with True Tone flash, Live Photos, 4K video, faster LTE and Wi-Fi, and Touch ID with Apple Pay. Everyone who wants a smaller phone is going to love iPhone SE.”
The Cupertino giant has announced the cheapest iPhone yet, the £359 iPhone SE, alongside a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, and a new range of designs for the Apple Watch.
Geoff Blaber, Vice President, Americas at CCS Insight said:
“Flat year-on-year iPhone shipments in calendar 4Q15 and our anticipation of a 10-15% decline in shipments in calendar 1Q16 points to a clear slowdown in smartphone market growth. Apple remains dominant but it must look to new avenues for growth.
With the industry in a lull between the mobile boom and what comes next in automotive, the connected home, health and industrial applications of the Internet of things, pressure is likely to mount on Apple to reveal the next big source of growth. The challenge is that few areas can rival the size, reach and disruptive significance of the smartphone market.
Whilst a 4-inch iPhone may not capture the imagination of the Technorati, the iPhone SE is a crucially important reinforcement of Apple’s entry level iPhone portfolio that promises to drive significant volume and margin.
With iPhone growth slowing, the iPhone SE can address the large number of iPhone 5S and iPhone 5c customers that are long overdue an upgrade. It’s a crucially important product that can help reinvigorate iPhone growth ahead of its next generation flagship.
The iPhone SE is a product designed to strengthen the entry level portfolio rather than relying on cheaper pricing of older models. The move gets Apple’s low end iPhone on new hardware and is likely to establish itself as a long term volume and margin driver.
The iPhone SE stands to become the new workhorse in the iPhone portfolio. It addresses a new price point and plays a critical role in bringing new users into the Apple ecosystem.
The new iPad Pro is a logical extension of its premium iPad Pro line but a high price point relative to the competition is unlikely to transform prospects in a saturated tablet market.
Pricing is the most significant component of these announcements. Apple will always prioritize margins but we’re seeing Apple price more aggressively across all products and categories (iPhone, iPad, Watch).”