This year Apple retired the iPhone SE and introduced the iPhone 16e. It raised the question: will the entry-level phone have an annual cycle or longer, as the iPhone SE did? We may have the answer.
Will iPhone 16e be replaced by iPhone 17e in less than a year?
Respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo from TFI Securities is the latest to tackle that question, just days after another industry heavyweight, Mark Gurman from Bloomberg, had his own opinion.
Here’s the thing: Apple is careful in its naming of products. Dropping the iPhone SE name indicated certain things: the new phone wouldn’t stick to the small iPhone with Touch ID format of earlier iPhone SE models, nor would it regurgitate an existing design by adding a new processor.
The iPhone 16e name confirmed that the new handset was something quite different — and it made a price increase easier for customers to swallow as suddenly this was an all-new entry into the iPhone 16 series.
And the new name also suggests a faster cadence of upgrades: if the iPhone 17 is out this fall, wouldn’t iPhone 17e make sense in spring next year? Well, perhaps. But one of the ways Apple keeps the price of its entry-level phones low is to use an existing design and to keep it in the range for several years.
Mark Gurman, in his Power On newsletter from April 27, had his own idea, and commented on the naming change. “The other lever Apple pulled here was marketing it as an iPhone 16 variant rather than a new iPhone SE. That adds quite a bit more allure and makes it more interesting to consumers in places like China,” Gurman said.
Then, he addressed the issue of when it should be replaced. “The big question is whether Apple will update this new “e” line annually. Apple hasn’t yet made a final decision — and it’s still months from needing to,” he insisted.
However, Ming-Chi Kuo has a different opinion. In a blog of his own, Kuo revealed his predictions of all the new iPhones coming in the next two years and more.
Kuo says that iPhone 17e is on schedule as the only iPhone release in the first half of 2026, and iPhone 18e will land in the first half of 2027.
If correct, it could mean more phones than ever in the range, unless the iPhone 16e is retired when the iPhone 17e launches. Maybe that’s why other iPhones were deleted when the iPhone 16e appeared, to simplify the range.
