Chinese Lunar New Year and Valentine’s Day are typically the two biggest consumer spending events after the holiday shopping season. Imagine buying an SE3 during that period only for the SE4 to be unveiled in time for you to return it and order the latest model. It would create some logistical headaches not only for Apple corporate sales but for other resellers and retailers as well.
Cutting down supply ahead of time and pushing shipping dates well into next month is one way to prevent that, as a cancelled SE3 order is much easier to deal with than a returned order that is no longer sealed new-in-box. But it would still be unlike Apple to release a new generation of product in February. In the past 11 years, the last 3 times Apple released a new product for sale in February, there was no immediate predecessor to risk a rush of returns of the last-gen model from the aforementioned consumer spending events. In 2018 the 1st-gen HomePod went on sale in Feb., in 2023 the 2nd-gen HomePod went on sale in Feb. after the 1st-gen was discontinued in 2021, and last February Apple Vision Pro went on sale. None of those products replaced another one that Apple was marketing at the time, but the SE4 will be a much-improved immediate successor to the SE3.