iPhone SE Demand Is ‘Overwhelming’ ⇥ mashable.com

Christina Warren, Mashable:

On the earnings call, Apple tried to spin numbers about upgrade cycles and the new customer wins it’s making over Android users. And that’s all well and good. But the device that might have the biggest impact on sales in the short term wasn’t even counted in the Q2 2016 earnings — the iPhone SE. […]

The product didn’t go on sale until March 31 so none of the sales were accounted in this earnings report, but Apple made a point to say that “demand has been very strong,” adding that it “exceeds supply at this point.”

In response to an analyst’s question, Cook went further saying that “it is clear that there is a demand there even much beyond what we thought.”

Only Apple knows exactly what the sales split is between the three different iPhone sizes currently available — in fact, they announced during the introduction of the iPhone SE that they sold 30 million four-inch iPhones in 2015. That’s about 13% of the total number of iPhones sold in 2015, so it’s not a huge market, but it’s still pretty significant.

Perhaps Apple figured that the SE would retain a fairly similar share of iPhone sales — that is, that those buying four-inch models chose to do so based primarily on screen size — and didn’t factor just how many people would dump a larger iPhone or Android model. Here’s hoping this can encourage a more regular four-inch update.