Apple iPhone Xr, probably the design springboard for the predicted iPhone SE 4.
The iPhone SE is a staple of Apple’s smartphone range, with the third-generation model offering an affordable way to buy an iPhone. But it looks like the iPhone SE fourth-generation handset is not coming, Ever.
There had already been rumors from sources including the reliable analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TFI Securities that Apple was either canceling or at least postponing the fourth iteration of the iPhone SE (full details here). Kuo has now weighed in further on the topic, and it’s not good news for anyone holding out for an update to the SE range.
In a post titled “Qualcomm is the biggest winner of Apple’s cancelation of 2024 iPhone SE 4” at medium.com, Kuo now says that things are rather more definite than before. He said, “The supply chain has received instructions from Apple indicating that the production and shipment plans for the 2024 iPhone SE 4 have been canceled rather than delayed.”
In some ways, this is no surprise: my suspicion was that postponement was less likely than cancellation.
The reason, it seems, is not that a lower-priced iPhone wasn’t a good idea, but rather the 5G chip that was being planned for the new phone, it’s claimed.
The principle of the SE phone has always been clear: take an existing iPhone design and squeeze the latest processor into it. Because the design costs were minimal, it meant that a lower price was doable, offering a phone with excellent performance but without the cutting-edge look and features of the latest iPhones.
But the iPhone SE expected in 2024 was going to see the first outing of Apple’s own in-house 5G chip, Kuo says. This chip is in development now but isn’t quite up to snuff, the report claims, so this changed the intention of debuting it on the SE 4 and then judging whether it should be in next year’s iPhone, the iPhone 16.
Kuo says, “ Due to concerns that the performance of the in-house baseband chip may not be up to par with Qualcomm’s, Apple initially planned to launch its baseband chip in 2024 and let the low-end iPhone SE 4 adopt it first, and decide whether to let the iPhone 16 use its baseband chip depending on the development status of iPhone SE 4. However, the cancelation of the iPhone SE 4 has significantly increased the chances of Qualcomm remaining the exclusive supplier of baseband chips for the 2H24 new iPhone 16 series, which is better than the market consensus that Qualcomm will start losing iPhone orders in 2024.”
This ain’t good news for someone wanting an affordable iPhone that was newer than the current iPhone SE. But, as Kuo says, it’s great news for Qualcomm, as it likely means its 5G modem will be in the iPhone 16 range of phones.
The fourth-gen iPhone SE was thought to be based on the iPhone XR chassis, making it a noticeably bigger option than the current SE. And its arrival would mean that there would no longer be a Touch ID iPhone: all would be using Face ID instead. Will Apple keep the existing iPhone SE hanging around for longer as a result? Or could it update the SE at a later date, say 2025, and model it on a different iPhone altogether? Time will tell.
