8 ms·

The iPhone SE is essentially non-existent in the US. Its primary target is developing markets like India where the phone is made. Most people I know aren’t even

by sxg 8y ago

The iPhone SE is essentially non-existent in the US. Its primary target is developing markets like India where the phone is made. Most people I know aren’t even aware the SE exists. If they see it in stores, they just assume it’s one of the older iPhones. Hacker News is the only place I see the SE getting any significant attention.

kgwgk 8y ago
I sold quite well when it was launched: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-iphone-se-marketshare-q2-2016/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-iphone-se-markets... Of course now it's old, but would sell better if it received some love from Apple.
harshreality 8y ago
My parents have them. Despite that (or maybe because) whenever I see them I ask them WTF they're thinking keeping a phone with such a limited screen, they insist that they "don't like" modern phablets, though they've never even used one. Go figure. Apple sells enough for their stores to carry the SE, so it's not really a developing-nation-only phone.
- Moto7451 8y ago
  I had one and love it. I’m able to use it without limitation one handed (often while carrying something or otherwise unable to use both hands), something I struggle with on my X. I also don’t like having things in my pockets so the small size was fantastic. I was gifted an Apple Watch and that has helped with a lot of things I would do single handed on the SE previously, like quick reply text messages and getting directions. There’s a market for small high end phones. It’s likely just not big enough for Apple (or anyone really) to care about.
  - wlesieutre 8y ago
    A friend and his wife both have iPhones X (do you pluralize that as iPhone Xs even through that's the new model?) and they both gripe about the size. He commented that it's a nice iPad Mini, but not great to carry around like a smartphone. Apparently Apple disagrees.
    - macintux 8y ago
      > do you pluralize that as iPhone Xs even through that's the new model? I'd have to go digging, but there was a Twitter thread in which I participated about this that Phil Schiller chimed in on. Apple's official(?) stance is that you never pluralize iPhone; instead, you use the word "devices". "A friend and his wife both have iPhone X devices" (or, more likely, "A friend and his wife both own the iPhone X").
      - wlesieutre 8y ago
        Found it via MacRumors https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/29/phil-schiller-dont-pluralize-product-names/ https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/29/phil-schiller-dont-plur... Interesting to know, but nobody's gonna do that. Like how you're "supposed" to say "LEGO bricks" insteado of "LEGOs."
        binomialxenon 8y ago
        I often see sticklers for the "official" Apple terminology fighting losing battles on forums and comment sections trying to tell everyone to pronounce it "iPhone Ten" rather than "iPhone eX". Also, I think Apple prefers it to be called "iPhone" rather than "the iPhone". Who knows.
        wlesieutre 8y ago
        Related thing, I remember some people (probably me included) making fun of Microsoft for skipping Windows 9, and now here we are with iPhones.
    - matwood 8y ago
      I find the X small. It's tall, but certainly not large. And the iPad mini comparison is obviously a joke, but really: https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Apple-iPad-mini_id7523/size/Apple-iPhone-X/phones/10414 https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Apple-iPad-mini_id7523/siz...
      - 8y ago
  - aczerepinski 8y ago
    They sell 7 different phones though. I have a hard time believing that if one of them were small to cater to folks like me, 6 remaining large phones would not be enough to cover the "mainstream" market? Most of their phone models are barely differentiated from one another. What's the compelling use case for buying an iPhone 7 Plus right now?
    - Moto7451 8y ago
      Price. It’s big phone someone is happy to pay for. I believe the 7 and 8 use the same exact screen and case so there’s some savings to be had with parts commonalities v.s. another form factor for the “cheap phone”.
jsjohnst 8y ago
The iPhone SE is very popular with many women I know due to its size and ability to fit into women’s pockets. Women’s pockets are terrible in general. Many further refuse to buy a new iphone until another smaller one comes out. Happy to provide links to articles on the topic, but <insert search engine of choice> will easily find them too.
- parkersweb 8y ago
  True - exactly why my wife chose one earlier this year. Her main criteria was "it has to fit in my back pocket" - which meant 4.5" screen. There's so few of those devices in the modern smartphone market - and yet I wonder why? I'd happily keep my phone small if it didn't mean compromising on performance...
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Performance gets mentioned a lot, and I'm curious what people are doing with their phones that demands so much of it. Is the iPhone suddenly everyone's preferred device for playing Fortnite or something?
    - gruez 8y ago
      considering how popular "webapps" (monstrosities with 5M+ of compressed javascript) are, you need a powerful CPU even if all you're doing is browsing.
      - bunderbunder 8y ago
        The A9 seems to still be up to the task, despite being nowhere near as powerful as what's in these newer phones. It may not always be that way, I admit. But I'm not sure that my Stockholm syndrome with respect to the ad industry has developed to the point that I'm willing to spend hundreds of extra dollars on additional hardware and data plan to solve a problem that I could solve for free with an ad blocker.
zeckalpha 8y ago
Happy with my SE
gnulinux 8y ago
My coworkers were talking about how good iPhone SE is yesterday in our company social chat. Just a datapoint, from Boston, MA. I didn't know of iPhone SE but I never used iPhone before.
wlesieutre 8y ago
Apple couldn't keep the SE in stock for months after it launched in the US. It released at the end of March, here's a thread complaining about it two months later: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-se-constantly-out-of-stock.1974477/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-se-constantly-ou... I got mine at the end of June, 3 months after it was released. For the iPhone X, sure, blame stock constraints on new manufacturing and low part yields or something. This was basically an iPhone 5; Apple knew how to build it, they either severely underestimated how popular it would be or they couldn't keep up. At this point it's 2.5 years old (more or less the guts of an iPhone 6s), so sxg's friends that assume it's one of the older phones aren't even wrong. If Apple had ever updated it I'm sure they'd have kept selling better.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  As another anecdote, I've had Android user friends borrow my phone and comment on how nice it is. But nobody's made a good 4" phone on that side of the market in a very long time.
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    I always thought that one of the reasons for the SE's success. Smaller and cheaper Androids are generally terrible, the SE was a great performing phone in a small case. Which made it a good option for buying for the kids and those who don't want to spend absurd amounts. My anecdote is I wanted to get off Android, and I've owned a couple of phablets and loathed them, so the SE seemed the only viable option.
    - at-fates-hands 8y ago
      > Smaller and cheaper Androids are generally terrible Completely agree. Most of the smaller Android phones are in the value band so the specs leave a lot to be desired. I'm still switching between my Lumia 950 (5.2) and my OnePlus 2 (5.5). The OnePlus even at 5.5 feels like a bulky brick phone compared to the Lumia. I've been on the hunt for a smaller Android, but have yet to find a smaller form factor with decent specs that beats my Lumia.
gumby 8y ago
My (20 yo) kid has an 8 and still grouses that he misses his SE.
ubermonkey 8y ago
Are you SURE about that? I know a LOT of folks who have stayed with that form factor. Some are women with small hands, but not all of them -- and virtually none of them are HN-nerdy-types.
- Kirth 8y ago
  I mainly know (and am) the nerdy type that wears skinny jeans. The "bigger is better, why would you want such a small thing" crowd is alien and bewildering to me ;). Humans seem to optimize for echo chambers.
  - mediaman 8y ago
    I agree, as a guy who wears jeans that are not baggy, the big phones have serious usage issues. Put them in your front pocket, and they're jamming themselves into your hipbone when you try to sit. I owned a 6+ and was happy to upgrade to a smaller 8 later. I wish I could have a smaller phone that that was somewhat current. I don't understand how women deal with it, with jeans that are tighter fitting and have smaller pockets. I think most women wearing form fitting jeans put it in their back pocket while walking and then have to put it on a table or something while sitting. Or they put it in their purse, where the size isn't a problem.
- nottorp 8y ago
  I'm not a woman (although my hands may be on the small side for a male) and I still like the SE because of the form factor. One handed use, folks. I would even pay XS prices for the same form factor, if only Apple bothered to make one... To continue with the anecdote-is-not-data theme though, my wife is hanging on to her 5C for dear life because ... it's BLUE. So at least they got some part of the female demographic with the XR.
bunderbunder 8y ago
> The iPhone SE is essentially non-existent in the US. It supposedly represents (based on an article I'm not going to try and dig up again) about 10% of iPhones. iPhones are about 50% of the US market, so that implies about 1 in 20 smartphones in the US is an iPhone SE. Certainly not a market leader like the Galaxy or the marquee iPhone models, but "essentially non-existent" is overstating the case a bit.
- kolbe 8y ago
  I've heard it's around 5% of iPhones in the US based on app user data.
  - bunderbunder 8y ago
    Which may be a biased way of estimating total share of the phone market, if SE users have different app consumption habits from users of other models. Which is a plausible hypothesis. Choosing a phone that's got a markedly smaller screen than anything else on the market seems like the kind of thing you'd be more likely to do if you don't intend to spend a whole lot of time looking at said screen. Whereas, if you're going to be spending a lot of time Facebooking or playing games on your phone, then yeah, having more screen real estate is going to matter relatively more to you. It might also explain why Apple's not demonstrating too much concern about servicing the SE camp - they (OK, I should come clean here - we) might just not be a particularly profitable segment of Apple's user base.
    - kolbe 8y ago
      I think, instead, they know people like me will have to pay more for a device that doesn't meet my needs very well. They can leverage the fact that I need iOS, and can proceed to force people like me to pay more and more because we're locked into the ecosystem, even if there aren't any phones that are compact. I got my SE for $100. I think y'all are unsatisfied with that revenue, and at this point, the XS is my next best option. So, I doubt they are discontinuing because they don't care about us. It's just a calculated bet that they won't actually lose us. >they (OK, I should come clean here - we) might just not be a particularly profitable segment of Apple's user base. I think this is a bad way to think of it, though. I know that's the way a McKinsey analyst might think of product, but it doesn't have long term focus. It's a lot like how Facebook quit caring about unprofitable people (the well-educated crowd), in order to cater to the consumerist suckers. But as the interesting people who created the content that built facebook into what it is today have fled, that content has gone with, and consumerist suckers are no longer entertained. The people I know with SEs are kind of like that crowd. If you start putting Androids into their hand, the rest of the people will take notice and follow.
cicero 8y ago
I have one and I love it. I got it from a T-Mobile promotion where they gave away a free SE with the purchase of an iPhone (including another SE). So I got my wife and I matching phones. The SE does everything I need, fits comfortably in my pocket (unlike my previous phone, a Nexus 5X), and was a great deal. (I am over my desire to have the latest tech that I had in my youth. I'm 55 and I'm just interested in accomplishing other goals that are less ephemeral.)
- tspike 8y ago
  I love my SE but as an iOS developer I'm ready for an upgrade. I went into this year sure I'd be upgrading to something new, but they've offered me nothing. The March and June events came and went without anything interesting, and now everything is a variant of the same phone with no headphone jack, oversized and overpriced.
- elboru 8y ago
  I'm 31 and I think I'm reaching that point, at least regarding smartphones. I bought the iPhone X and I think it'll be the last flagship phone I'll buy, unless a real great innovations appears in the horizon. Phones are getting expensive and kind of boring, they're increasing their price without offering any real innovation. I just don't see the value added to my daily life when I pay for the top phone in the market.
  - symfoniq 8y ago
    35 here. Can confirm. I can't say my iPhone X has been worth what it cost, and I'm unlikely to replace it until it dies.

by sxg 8y ago

kgwgk 8y ago

I sold quite well when it was launched: https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-iphone-se-marketshare-q2-2016/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/apple-iphone-se-markets... Of course now it's old, but would sell better if it received some love from Apple.

harshreality 8y ago

My parents have them. Despite that (or maybe because) whenever I see them I ask them WTF they're thinking keeping a phone with such a limited screen, they insist that they "don't like" modern phablets, though they've never even used one. Go figure. Apple sells enough for their stores to carry the SE, so it's not really a developing-nation-only phone.

Moto7451 8y ago
I had one and love it. I’m able to use it without limitation one handed (often while carrying something or otherwise unable to use both hands), something I struggle with on my X. I also don’t like having things in my pockets so the small size was fantastic. I was gifted an Apple Watch and that has helped with a lot of things I would do single handed on the SE previously, like quick reply text messages and getting directions. There’s a market for small high end phones. It’s likely just not big enough for Apple (or anyone really) to care about.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  A friend and his wife both have iPhones X (do you pluralize that as iPhone Xs even through that's the new model?) and they both gripe about the size. He commented that it's a nice iPad Mini, but not great to carry around like a smartphone. Apparently Apple disagrees.
  - macintux 8y ago
    > do you pluralize that as iPhone Xs even through that's the new model? I'd have to go digging, but there was a Twitter thread in which I participated about this that Phil Schiller chimed in on. Apple's official(?) stance is that you never pluralize iPhone; instead, you use the word "devices". "A friend and his wife both have iPhone X devices" (or, more likely, "A friend and his wife both own the iPhone X").
    - wlesieutre 8y ago
      Found it via MacRumors https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/29/phil-schiller-dont-pluralize-product-names/ https://www.macrumors.com/2016/04/29/phil-schiller-dont-plur... Interesting to know, but nobody's gonna do that. Like how you're "supposed" to say "LEGO bricks" insteado of "LEGOs."
      - binomialxenon 8y ago
        I often see sticklers for the "official" Apple terminology fighting losing battles on forums and comment sections trying to tell everyone to pronounce it "iPhone Ten" rather than "iPhone eX". Also, I think Apple prefers it to be called "iPhone" rather than "the iPhone". Who knows.
        wlesieutre 8y ago
        Related thing, I remember some people (probably me included) making fun of Microsoft for skipping Windows 9, and now here we are with iPhones.
  - matwood 8y ago
    I find the X small. It's tall, but certainly not large. And the iPad mini comparison is obviously a joke, but really: https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Apple-iPad-mini_id7523/size/Apple-iPhone-X/phones/10414 https://www.phonearena.com/phones/Apple-iPad-mini_id7523/siz...
    - 8y ago
- aczerepinski 8y ago
  They sell 7 different phones though. I have a hard time believing that if one of them were small to cater to folks like me, 6 remaining large phones would not be enough to cover the "mainstream" market? Most of their phone models are barely differentiated from one another. What's the compelling use case for buying an iPhone 7 Plus right now?
  - Moto7451 8y ago
    Price. It’s big phone someone is happy to pay for. I believe the 7 and 8 use the same exact screen and case so there’s some savings to be had with parts commonalities v.s. another form factor for the “cheap phone”.

jsjohnst 8y ago

The iPhone SE is very popular with many women I know due to its size and ability to fit into women’s pockets. Women’s pockets are terrible in general. Many further refuse to buy a new iphone until another smaller one comes out. Happy to provide links to articles on the topic, but <insert search engine of choice> will easily find them too.

parkersweb 8y ago
True - exactly why my wife chose one earlier this year. Her main criteria was "it has to fit in my back pocket" - which meant 4.5" screen. There's so few of those devices in the modern smartphone market - and yet I wonder why? I'd happily keep my phone small if it didn't mean compromising on performance...
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Performance gets mentioned a lot, and I'm curious what people are doing with their phones that demands so much of it. Is the iPhone suddenly everyone's preferred device for playing Fortnite or something?
  - gruez 8y ago
    considering how popular "webapps" (monstrosities with 5M+ of compressed javascript) are, you need a powerful CPU even if all you're doing is browsing.
    - bunderbunder 8y ago
      The A9 seems to still be up to the task, despite being nowhere near as powerful as what's in these newer phones. It may not always be that way, I admit. But I'm not sure that my Stockholm syndrome with respect to the ad industry has developed to the point that I'm willing to spend hundreds of extra dollars on additional hardware and data plan to solve a problem that I could solve for free with an ad blocker.

zeckalpha 8y ago

Happy with my SE

gnulinux 8y ago

My coworkers were talking about how good iPhone SE is yesterday in our company social chat. Just a datapoint, from Boston, MA. I didn't know of iPhone SE but I never used iPhone before.

wlesieutre 8y ago

Apple couldn't keep the SE in stock for months after it launched in the US. It released at the end of March, here's a thread complaining about it two months later: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-se-constantly-out-of-stock.1974477/ https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/iphone-se-constantly-ou... I got mine at the end of June, 3 months after it was released. For the iPhone X, sure, blame stock constraints on new manufacturing and low part yields or something. This was basically an iPhone 5; Apple knew how to build it, they either severely underestimated how popular it would be or they couldn't keep up. At this point it's 2.5 years old (more or less the guts of an iPhone 6s), so sxg's friends that assume it's one of the older phones aren't even wrong. If Apple had ever updated it I'm sure they'd have kept selling better.

wlesieutre 8y ago
As another anecdote, I've had Android user friends borrow my phone and comment on how nice it is. But nobody's made a good 4" phone on that side of the market in a very long time.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  I always thought that one of the reasons for the SE's success. Smaller and cheaper Androids are generally terrible, the SE was a great performing phone in a small case. Which made it a good option for buying for the kids and those who don't want to spend absurd amounts. My anecdote is I wanted to get off Android, and I've owned a couple of phablets and loathed them, so the SE seemed the only viable option.
  - at-fates-hands 8y ago
    > Smaller and cheaper Androids are generally terrible Completely agree. Most of the smaller Android phones are in the value band so the specs leave a lot to be desired. I'm still switching between my Lumia 950 (5.2) and my OnePlus 2 (5.5). The OnePlus even at 5.5 feels like a bulky brick phone compared to the Lumia. I've been on the hunt for a smaller Android, but have yet to find a smaller form factor with decent specs that beats my Lumia.

gumby 8y ago

My (20 yo) kid has an 8 and still grouses that he misses his SE.

ubermonkey 8y ago

Are you SURE about that? I know a LOT of folks who have stayed with that form factor. Some are women with small hands, but not all of them -- and virtually none of them are HN-nerdy-types.

Kirth 8y ago
I mainly know (and am) the nerdy type that wears skinny jeans. The "bigger is better, why would you want such a small thing" crowd is alien and bewildering to me ;). Humans seem to optimize for echo chambers.
- mediaman 8y ago
  I agree, as a guy who wears jeans that are not baggy, the big phones have serious usage issues. Put them in your front pocket, and they're jamming themselves into your hipbone when you try to sit. I owned a 6+ and was happy to upgrade to a smaller 8 later. I wish I could have a smaller phone that that was somewhat current. I don't understand how women deal with it, with jeans that are tighter fitting and have smaller pockets. I think most women wearing form fitting jeans put it in their back pocket while walking and then have to put it on a table or something while sitting. Or they put it in their purse, where the size isn't a problem.
nottorp 8y ago
I'm not a woman (although my hands may be on the small side for a male) and I still like the SE because of the form factor. One handed use, folks. I would even pay XS prices for the same form factor, if only Apple bothered to make one... To continue with the anecdote-is-not-data theme though, my wife is hanging on to her 5C for dear life because ... it's BLUE. So at least they got some part of the female demographic with the XR.

bunderbunder 8y ago

> The iPhone SE is essentially non-existent in the US. It supposedly represents (based on an article I'm not going to try and dig up again) about 10% of iPhones. iPhones are about 50% of the US market, so that implies about 1 in 20 smartphones in the US is an iPhone SE. Certainly not a market leader like the Galaxy or the marquee iPhone models, but "essentially non-existent" is overstating the case a bit.

kolbe 8y ago
I've heard it's around 5% of iPhones in the US based on app user data.
- bunderbunder 8y ago
  Which may be a biased way of estimating total share of the phone market, if SE users have different app consumption habits from users of other models. Which is a plausible hypothesis. Choosing a phone that's got a markedly smaller screen than anything else on the market seems like the kind of thing you'd be more likely to do if you don't intend to spend a whole lot of time looking at said screen. Whereas, if you're going to be spending a lot of time Facebooking or playing games on your phone, then yeah, having more screen real estate is going to matter relatively more to you. It might also explain why Apple's not demonstrating too much concern about servicing the SE camp - they (OK, I should come clean here - we) might just not be a particularly profitable segment of Apple's user base.
  - kolbe 8y ago
    I think, instead, they know people like me will have to pay more for a device that doesn't meet my needs very well. They can leverage the fact that I need iOS, and can proceed to force people like me to pay more and more because we're locked into the ecosystem, even if there aren't any phones that are compact. I got my SE for $100. I think y'all are unsatisfied with that revenue, and at this point, the XS is my next best option. So, I doubt they are discontinuing because they don't care about us. It's just a calculated bet that they won't actually lose us. >they (OK, I should come clean here - we) might just not be a particularly profitable segment of Apple's user base. I think this is a bad way to think of it, though. I know that's the way a McKinsey analyst might think of product, but it doesn't have long term focus. It's a lot like how Facebook quit caring about unprofitable people (the well-educated crowd), in order to cater to the consumerist suckers. But as the interesting people who created the content that built facebook into what it is today have fled, that content has gone with, and consumerist suckers are no longer entertained. The people I know with SEs are kind of like that crowd. If you start putting Androids into their hand, the rest of the people will take notice and follow.

cicero 8y ago

I have one and I love it. I got it from a T-Mobile promotion where they gave away a free SE with the purchase of an iPhone (including another SE). So I got my wife and I matching phones. The SE does everything I need, fits comfortably in my pocket (unlike my previous phone, a Nexus 5X), and was a great deal. (I am over my desire to have the latest tech that I had in my youth. I'm 55 and I'm just interested in accomplishing other goals that are less ephemeral.)

tspike 8y ago
I love my SE but as an iOS developer I'm ready for an upgrade. I went into this year sure I'd be upgrading to something new, but they've offered me nothing. The March and June events came and went without anything interesting, and now everything is a variant of the same phone with no headphone jack, oversized and overpriced.
elboru 8y ago
I'm 31 and I think I'm reaching that point, at least regarding smartphones. I bought the iPhone X and I think it'll be the last flagship phone I'll buy, unless a real great innovations appears in the horizon. Phones are getting expensive and kind of boring, they're increasing their price without offering any real innovation. I just don't see the value added to my daily life when I pay for the top phone in the market.
- symfoniq 8y ago
  35 here. Can confirm. I can't say my iPhone X has been worth what it cost, and I'm unlikely to replace it until it dies.