Who is Going to Buy an iPhone 16e? Probably Not iPhone SE Owners

It would have been straightforward to estimate how an updated iPhone SE might sell. For its entire existence the iPhone SE accounted for 5-10% of iPhone sales. A new iPhone SE, similarly positioned at the low end of the iPhone lineup, would probably have sold similarly.

Yet, Apple transformed the old iPhone SE into the newly positioned and higher priced iPhone 16e, firmly placed in the hierarchy of latest models. This is uncharted territory and confounds efforts to predict how it might perform. We thought we’d look at the profile of previous iPhone SE buyers, specifically what phone they owned before their new iPhone SE to see if that might shed some light.

The iPhone SE appealed to Android switchers, first-time smartphone owners, and especially to existing SE owners. Overall, it appears iPhone SE buyers stayed with a low-price, minimal feature phone, rather than upgrading from an iPhone SE to more expensive models.

Specifically, in 2024 19% of iPhone SE buyers switched from an Android phone, compared to 14% of all other iPhone buyers (Chart 1). Another 9% of iPhone SE buyers were getting their first smartphone, either upgrading from a basic or flip phone or buying their first phone of any type. For comparison, only 2% of the rest of the iPhone buyers were buying their first smartphone.