The iPhone 5C took the place of what would have been the
year-old iPhone 5
They basically took the guts of the iPhone 5 and put it in a colorful plastic shell and sold it for at $550 US. Then the iPhone 5 was removed from Apple's line-up (retailers still carried them until supply ran out)
So even though the iPhone 5C was a "new" model... it was in name only. It was still the 2nd-tier iPhone.
The 5C was between the $650 iPhone 5S and the older $450 iPhone 4S.
I'm still torn on where they would place the 5SE next month.
It's faster than an iPhone 6... but has a smaller screen. Those should cancel out and then $550 would make sense. And the iPhone 5S would still be $450 next month too. I'm fine with that.
But in September... the iPhone 6S will have the same internal specs yet a bigger screen. They wouldn't charge the same amount of money for the 5SE and the 6S... would they?
So maybe they drop the price of the 5SE to $500 in September... and keep the 5S at $450 for a little longer too?
Ugh... this has gotten far too complicated
It was easy when there was one new model per year... and the older models dropped $100 each year.
Now they're introducing a new model at the six-month mark... and it's supposedly a very powerful phone but with a smaller screen. Then in another six months... new models and older models that have to be priced somehow.