Apple’s new budget iPhone entry, a sequel to the SE phone, is still expected in March, despite potential production problems from the coronavirus in China.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from Taiwan-based TF International Securities, who tends to have his finger on the pulse of the Apple production pipeline, released a note Monday saying the new phone would still launch in the first half of the year. CultofMac calls him “the best Apple analyst on the planet.”
MacRumors first reported on the note.
The previous edition of the SE, discontinued by Apple in 2019, had a 4-inch screen and was the answer to consumers who wanted a smaller body and lower price. It was selling for $349 before Apple pulled it.
The lowest-priced iPhone from the current lineup is the iPhone 11, which starts at $699. Apple also sells the older iPhone 8 and 8 Plus models, from 2017, starting at $449 and $549.
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Daniel Ives, an analyst with Wedbush Securities, expects the new iPhone, which would be called either the SE 2 or the iPhone 9, to sell for $399.
According to MacWorld, the phone will have a 4.7-inch display, larger than the previous edition – but still way smaller than the 6.1 inches of the iPhone 11 – and come with 64 gigabytes of internal storage, double what previous SE buyers got with their 32 GBs.
The phone is likely to have an A13 chip for power, the same chip offered for the iPhone 11, and the old Home button that many iPhone fans loved, known as Touch ID, instead of Face ID.
In the note, Kuo also said he also expects a new iPad Pro edition to be released next month, leading MacRumors to point to a March event to introduce new products. Kuo also said the new iPhones for September and the following year could suffer from manufacturing slowdowns in 2020, due to the smaller, quarantined workforce in China.
[“source=usatoday”]
