Apple Might Made A Huge Mistake By Killing Its iPhone SE

There were two significant things happened in the September event: iPhone XR, XS, and XS Max were released, and the iPhone SE was killed off.

With a price tag of $350 (around Rs. 25,000), the iPhone SE was among the best affordable smartphones available. It did not come with a large and flashy display with high resolution like many modern devices, but it offered impressive performance.

But it is was not just a small handset as it could be a good alternative for whom just want to buy a comfortably handheld iPhone without a big screen.

In the first 6 years of making iPhones, Apple never made ones with a display larger than 4 inches in size.

iPhone from the first to the iPhone 4S generation all came with a 3.5-inch display.

In 2012, Apple started to increase the display size of its iPhone to 4 inches from the iPhone 5. It was actually quite a big change as developers needed to resize all of their apps.

The iPhone 5S and iPhone 5S, which were released in the following year, still came with the same 4-inch display.

Then in 2014, the iPhone maker suddenly decided that it was time to increase its iPhone display once again, to 4.7 and 5.5-inch displays on their iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus respectively.

Many people really loved the bigger displays of the iPhone 6 series, but there were also many users who still favored the smaller designed worried that the iPhone 5S would eventually be retired as it was the last iPhone featuring a 4-inch display.

Surprising many customers, Apple announced a successor to its iPhone 5S in late 2016 which was called iPhone SE. It came with the same specifications of the iPhone 6S, except for its 4-inch display as in the iPhone 5S.

Since then, the iPhone SE stayed in the iPhone line up of Apple as the last small iPhone device, but also the most affordable ones with a price tag of just $350 (around Rs. 25,000).

With the presence of the iPhone SE, the iPhone line up was really diverse. In 2017, the iPhone line up featured handsets with prices from $350 (Rs. 25,000) to $1,149 (around Rs. 82,000), giving consumers a great range of choices to choose.

Having a lot of models in the iPhone lineup gave Apple a huge advantage. While the majority of phone producers could only mostly focus on one smartphone launch at a time, the iPhone maker was able to sell smartphones for basically almost everyone, from affordable to high-end and small to big devices.

But from now on, it is no longer the fact as Apple discontinued its iPhone SE.

It means that iPhone 7 with a price tag of $449 (around Rs. 32,000) is the smallest and most affordable iPhone device.

Even though I am not really happy with Apple’s decision of discontinuing the iPhone SE, Apple probably has a lot of reasons to back up its decision. Maybe its sale figure will go up even more in this holiday season.

But no one can deny the fact that the iPhone SE was still favored by a large number of customers. In 2016, Apple revealed that there were 30 million iPhone devices with 4-inch display sold in 2015, even though newer and bigger iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S were available.

So, even though I have to admit that the current design of the iPhone X is really tempting, I still believe that the iPhone SE was truly a successor to the iPhone 5S and I really hope that Apple will change its mind and make another 4-inch iPhone devices once again.

Even if the new version of the iPhone SE might come with a higher price tag than $350, people would still happy with it as many of them only want a smaller handset that can run iOS, and it would be better if the customers have more options from specifications and display to choose from.