Recently, the MWC World Mobile Communications Conference is being held in Barcelona, Spain, where many cutting-edge mobile technologies are exhibited. According to well-known analyst Ming-Chi Kuo,Apple is about to launch the iPhone SE4, which is a smaller version of the iPhone 14 as a whole and will be equipped with a 6.1-inch OLED screen.
In recent years, the screen size of mobile phones has approached the critical value, and the screen size of mainstream flagship models generally does not exceed 7 inches. With such a large smartphone screen, there are still many users who pursue small-screen flagships.
The iPhone SE and the short-lived iPhone mini series were born under such a background. And such a situation also gave birth to many strange phenomena. Many users expect the manufacturer to launch a small-screen flagship, but after the actual launch, although it receives praise from the market, it cannot win sales.
In fact, it is very easy to understand. There will indeed be such a group of users who are looking for the hand-holding feel of small-screen phones and the convenience brought by the relatively small size. Apple has also launched the SE product line to satisfy these users. Users questioned the suspicion of clearing inventory, which is a later story.
However, there are also many users who are not satisfied with the backward configuration of SE, including full screen, 5G and other latest technologies, SE does not have it. Under this market demand, Apple launched the Mini.
The iPhone 12 mini is the first Mini product launched by Apple. Prior to this, the market research organization CIRP released a statistical report on the sales of the iPhone 12 series in the US market.
The content of this report shows that the iPhone 12 series accounted for 76% of Apple’s total sales, which exceeded external expectations; but the iPhone 12 mini only accounted for 6%, which is quite different from the expected “small screen flagship big sales”.
Once upon a time, a user posted a claim that “the flagship with a small screen, I was the first to buy it.” Time has passed, and in the dismal sales, I vaguely saw the four characters of “next time”. Even if Apple improved the mini and launched the iPhone 13 mini Still can’t change its dismal sales.
This is mainly because the mini is limited by the size of its body, and the power is only 2227mAh. Originally, the short battery life is the problem that the entire iPhone series has been criticized for.
The appearance of the mini has shortened its limited battery life, and the situation has become more serious due to the addition of 5G, which has also caused many users who originally had the willingness to buy to be dismissed invisibly.
Therefore, the original sin of the small-screen flagship is actually the “experience degradation” caused by the limited screen size. Whether it is the sharp reduction of information carrying capacity or the compromise of hardware configuration, the small-screen flagship that consumers expect is not so flagship.
So why does Apple continue to launch the iPhone SE4? Because of the niche, yes, because of the small number of users, it can become a natural test field for Apple.
According to renowned analyst Ming-Chi Kuo,The iPhone SE4 will be equipped with Apple’s custom 5G chip, which is the long-rumored Apple self-developed 5G chip.From this point of view, the process of Apple’s self-developed baseband is much faster than the previous claim around 2025.
For Apple, if the self-developed baseband chip is directly put into production for the iPhone series with a huge number of users, any problems in actual use may cause a series of chain reactions and have serious consequences.
Therefore, for the mature iPhone series, the SE series is undoubtedly the best guinea pig among them.
Compared with the main product of iPhone, the number of users of iPhone SE4 is not so ideal. At the same time, compared with other wearable devices and tablet devices, iPhone SE4 is more suitable for the usage scenarios of smartphones, and it has inherent advantages.
Therefore, Apple took the lead in using self-developed baseband in iPhone SE4, which can be said to be a matter of course. If all goes well, next year’s iPhone 16 series may completely use self-developed 5G baseband chips.
