“Taiwan-based contract electronics maker Wistron Corp. is preparing for expansion of its production base in India to produce the next-generation smaller iPhone — the iPhone SE — according to sources in the South Asian country,” Charles Kang and Frances Huang report for Central News Agency (Focus Taiwan). “The sources told CNA Thursday that Apple Inc. has set its sights on the growing Indian market by pushing for shipments of the smartphone model in a bid to double the iPhone’s market share in the country over the next five years. The sources said that Apple has signed up Wistron to assemble the new iPhone SEs after the Taiwanese firm started to produce the [current] model in India in May, targeting markets around the world.”
“The sources said that the Taiwanese firm has prepared for adding a new iPhone SE production line in its plant located in Bangalore, in the state of Karnataka,” Kang and Huang report. “According to the sources, Wistron is expected to start to ship the new iPhone SE — which is expected to be more affordable than larger iPhones for many Indian consumers — in the first quarter of next year.”
“The sources said that Wistron will ship to the Indian market first before providing the products to consumers in other markets,” Kang and Huang report. “Tekz24Tekz24, an India-based tech website, said that the new iPhone SE will look like its [A9-powered] predecessor and will be equipped with the A10 processor, the iOS 11 operating system and a display of 4-4.2 inches. The new model will have 32GB and 128GB storage options, with a 1700mAh battery.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Fast, affordable, desirable Apple iPhones are key to Apple’s unit shipment growth in emerging markets like India. An iPhone SE with Apple’s A10 Fusion processor will be blazingly fast!
I imagine that at some point I’ll own an iPhone that’s so fast it will get ahead of me as I try to talk.
This could be any good. Can imagine using this iPhone as a personal hotspot for my iPad when I travel. Then I can get a wifi only iPad.
That’s what I do. It works pretty well.
Just watch that automatic software updating is not enabled, or their are not videos to download off iCloud, or you can easily go over your data allowance on you iPhone – as your iPad acts as if it is on wifi when piggy-backing using personal assistant
My wife got caught like that when travelling abroad a few years ago. Her first iPad was WiFi only and she used her iPhone as a personal hotspot. The cellular plan she was on came with a generous data allowance, so sharing it between the two devices worked really well. Then when she travelled abroad, she forgot that she would be using data roaming, which at that time was massively expensive. She inadvertently ran up more than a hundred dollars of data roaming charges because of an overnight iPad software update in a hotel where the WiFi didn’t work in her room and the iPhone reverted to cellular via data roaming but the iPad assumed it was on WiFi. She’s normally very careful with using data roaming and turns if off for most of the day, but didn’t anticipate that such heavy usage could happen while she slept.
I would want Siri to have an Indian accent and sing Bollywood tunes to me.
A March SE timeframe makes sense. It will add a little bounce to the April – June quarter.
I’m typing this post on my SE bought day one March 31, 2016. Love it! Perfect size and powerful. Looking forward to the upgrade next year …
So, this infers Apple is going to design a new 4″ iPhone SE? As opposed to dropping the price of a previous phone like the 6S? Or is Apple simply going to toss a newer A-CPU into the old iPhone SE design?
And presumably further more recent chips are going to be added in order for the new SE to be able to run all things iOS 11.
The main goal = cheap, using older generation, pre-existing, mass produced parts. IOW: ‘Speed boost’ = relative to the current SE.