The iPhone SE 2024 might not launch at all

(Image credit: Apple)

published 21 December 2022

If you're waiting for the iPhone SE 2024, the successor to the iPhone SE, you might have to wait a bit longer – or maybe forever. According to a respected industry analyst, poor sales of Apple's budget products including its best iPhone for budget buyers have made the firm rethink its plans.

According to analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, as reported by Cult of Mac, Apple may decide to postpone or even cancel the iPhone SE 2024's production. It's partly because of poorer than expected sales, but another key factor is the increasing cost of making the product – especially if Apple decides to make significant improvements.

Which iPhones aren't selling?

According to Kuo, Apple has been getting "consistently lower-than-expected shipments of mid-to-low-end iPhones (e.g., SE 3, 13 mini, and 14 Plus)." Demand for both the iPhone 12 mini and iPhone 13 mini was lower than Apple had hoped or expected, and with costs going up Apple is looking for ways to bring them down again. Simplifying the iPhone line-up by reducing the number of models would help with that by reducing development costs. The iPhone mini was the first casualty but it may not be the last.

If Apple does decide to delay or cancel the iPhone SE 2024, the iPhone 15 Plus may turn be the second and last of its line too: Apple's best days were when it had three versions of any key product – good, better and best – instead of good, good with a bigger screen, better and best.

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Writer, musician and broadcaster Carrie Marshall has been covering technology since 1998 and is particularly interested in how tech can help us live our best lives. Her CV is a who’s who of magazines, newspapers, websites and radio programmes ranging from T3, Techradar and MacFormat to the BBC, Sunday Post and People’s Friend. Carrie has written more than a dozen books, ghost-wrote two more and co-wrote seven more books and a Radio 2 documentary series; her memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was shortlisted for the British Book Awards. When she’s not scribbling, Carrie is the singer in Glaswegian rock band Unquiet Mind (unquietmindmusic).