The most successful smartphone models on the market this year are those that represent a compromise between processing power and affordability. In Europe, Samsung’s mid-range models have far outperformed Apple’s handsets, and all over the world, the trend seems to be the same: people are reluctant to invest a small fortune in a smartphone, choosing models that are good enough for pretty much all everyday tasks while having a friendlier price. Apple has always kept its handsets in the higher-end segment – with a few exceptions, of course. The iPhone SE, released in 2016, was a successful handset, a perfect choice for those who wanted to invest in an iPhone but not that much.
Some consider the status – and price – of the iPhone models available today is the main reason the market share of Apple is decreasing. After all, most smartphone users don’t really need it. They can very well check the news, the latest social media updates, the odds at Betway or the latest videos on YouTube on a handset that has a much lower processing power – and a much lower price. This is probably the reason why the mid-range and mid-to-higher end models of Android-powered phone manufacturers routinely outperform the iPhone in almost all markets.
Apple’s plan may be to offer a viable upgrade option to those approximately one hundred million iPhone users who still use the iPhone 6 and 6 Pro, perhaps even to offer a more affordable alternative for those who want to experiment with the iOS platform. Whichever the case, leading Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo thinks, the Cupertino giant will probably launch a new iPhone SE in the first half of next year. Hardware-wise, the handset will probably not differ very much from the current iPhone models – it will have the same A13 SoC, Kuo says, with a design and configuration similar to the iPhone 8, and no Face ID, and a rumoured price tag of around $450 (a bit over N160,000).
Aside from the new iPhone model, Kuo expects Apple to release several non-iPhone products in the first half of 2020. Among them, the long-awaited augmented reality headset that has reportedly been under development since 2017, a new iPad Pro equipped with a rear-facing 3D time-of-flight (ToF) camera sensor, and a MacBook Pro – probably a 16-inch model – that will finally replace its controversial butterfly keys, introduced in 2015, switching to a new scissor-switch key mechanism that is more durable and less prone to getting dirty.
There are currently around 100 million iPhone users out there who still hold on to their – relatively outdated – iPhone 6 series. The new iPhone SE will provide them with a more affordable and familiar model to switch to when their handsets when Apple drops support for the iPhone 6, rumoured to happen sometime next year.
