“I’ve been talking about Apple launching a new smaller screen iPhone for quite a while, and it appears the company will finally launch a new 4-inch smartphone sometime in mid-March,” Bill Maurer writes for Seeking Alpha. “While there seem to be a number of critics regarding this device, I believe the rumored iPhone 5se is a critical part of the company’s smartphone strategy.”
“This new phone is likely to have a massively upgraded chipset, potentially containing the A9 chip used in the 6s line. The phone should contain Apple Pay support, and might even have a larger battery,” Maurer writes. “While the camera might not get a full upgrade to the 6s line equivalent, Apple is likely to advance the camera specs forward to the 6 line, still a decent improvement.”
“With the success of the larger screen phones Apple went to with the iPhone 6 launch, some would wonder why the company is going smaller again. Well, the 5s is still selling, so there is obviously some demand for a smaller phone,” Maurer writes. “Three out of every five people still [have an iPhone] with a smaller screen. While a good percentage of those could buy a larger screen phone, there is demand for a 4-inch screen, and I’ve heard from many consumers who don’t want to go bigger. When you’re talking about a company that sells over 200 million phones annually, even 10-20% wanting a smaller screen equals tens of millions of phones per year.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It all depends on what the phone offers. Note also, that Piper Jaffray’s Apple analyst Gene Munster does not forese a 4-inch “iPhone 5se” this March, but insted expects a 4-inch “iPhone 7c” in September instead.