Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
It's not that they're rubbish phones so much as they're just marketed poorly. Apple Marketing are worse than INTC marketing as they both try to wring every extra dollar out of the unwashed masses. The original goal of these cheaper phones is lost as the price point they're designed for is ignored and reset by the marketing dept., dooming said phones to fail.
 
It's the price! I would have been interested in this phone if.... either the price was $499, or for $599 it had mag safe. I feel like it actually should have been both $499 and had magsafe. I would have purchased to replace my 13 if that was the case. At this point I will probably replace with the 17 in the near future
 
Not everyone wants to walk around looking like this

big-pockets.jpg
Nice ass baby!
 
If you spread out the payments over two years why would you buy the cheap phone? For a little over $4 a month you get the 17 which is a huge improvement.
 
It's apparently successful at pushing people to buy the regular 17, which is selling well. I suspect it cost little to develop, so there would be no real loss. Same can't be said for Air.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BluefinTuna
One day I will upgrade, and when that happens, I want the smallest iPhone I can get. Right now that is the iPhone 16e. The problem is that Apple has too many varieties of iPhones. Get rid of the e and air and replace them with the Mini. That would combine different market segments and make it more popular.
 
Last edited:
Yet they made the stupid thing and no one bought it. What don't you people get about that? THEY MADE A SMALL PHONE AND NO ONE BOUGHT IT. That's why it is no longer made. :rolleyes:
No one bought it because they made another small phone, the SE2, and released it 6 months before the 12 mini. The 13 mini was released mid-pandemic when no one was leaving their houses.

And yet here we are 5 years later and people are still talking about it.

Tell me, were people still bemoaning FaceID 5 years after touchID was removed? No. Because people didn't care.

People do care about the mini line. And Apple listened, they made a thin and light phone for them - that's somehow both thicker and heavier than the mini. Apple decided to give Mini users nothing that they asked for, spent engineering cycles designing it, and then tried to sell it to mini users as though it was actually thinner or lighter than the mini. Frankly, the hubris of Apple is a bit insulting.

The original phablet that Samsung made, and Apple mocked, is about the same size as an iPhone 13 mini. Let that sink in. There are those of us who don't want a phablet, at all.
 
At $600 the iPhone 16e is too expensive for a much worse phone than the one above it. The iPhone Air suffers from the same problem.

Just re-release the iPhone C with modern components inside. It'd satisfy the mini fans and would be attractive as a kids phone. Sell it at $299 and everyone and their grandma will have an iPhone.

iphone-5c-banner.jpg

GTY_iphone_5c_lpl_131004_16x9_992.jpg
 
Apple, in my opinion, is naturally doing everything it can to avoid harming higher price point and higher margin product sales. This is a phone meant for carriers to sell to those who otherwise wouldn't buy a nicer iPhone, not to help people save money. It was kind of doomed from the start.

iPhones have reached a point where the benefit of the latest/greatest is more marginal than it was say 5-10 years ago, so they have to play these tricks.

I'd say the weak sales of this product just reflect an active decision by Apple's leadership, and it may not be wrong from their perspective. As someone who would just prefer a cheaper, new, unlocked device from Apple at lower price points, I would have bought this myself if it was notably cheaper. I know they would have lost margin dollars in that though, and I think that's what they're actively avoiding.
 
Apple, in my opinion, is naturally doing everything it can to avoid harming higher price point and higher margin product sales. This is a phone meant for carriers to sell to those who otherwise wouldn't buy a nicer iPhone, not to help people save money. It was kind of doomed from the start.

iPhones have reached a point where the benefit of the latest/greatest is more marginal than it was say 5-10 years ago, so they have to play these tricks.

I'd say the weak sales of this product just reflect an active decision by Apple's leadership, and it may not be wrong from their perspective. As someone who would just prefer a cheaper, new, unlocked device from Apple at lower price points, I would have bought this myself if it was notably cheaper. I know they would have lost margin dollars in that though, and I think that's what they're actively avoiding.

No, this phone was meant for companies to buy them in lots and hand them to employees. Yes, individuals can buy it, but I don't think that was the aim.
 
Could it be a failure because the 16e isn't a cheap phone?

They need to rethink their pricing on these and use them as feeders to get people into the apple ecosystem like they used to do with the cheaper MacBooks back in the day. Loads of people I know got those as their first Mac, or even things like the iPods.
 
People buying their kids their first phone that will be dropped/smashed/lost/trashed are not going to spend this much on a 16e - Apple are missing a trick to not get in this younger market.
 
$600 is not low cost. Less than $200 is low cost.

Yes I know, Apple doesn't play in that market which is why I have a Motorola G ($129). It wasn't even the cheapest one available.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BluefinTuna
Replacing a £400 phone with a £600 phone and no one buys it? Calling something “budget” doesn’t make it so.

I needed to replace my iPhone recently, and I considered the 16e. Went for a refurb 15 Pro instead.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BluefinTuna
“That being said, both models are expected to see successors.”

Must not be too bad of a “failure” then.

Edit to add in from my other comment and expand a little. We need to be cautious about giving legitimacy to a random commenter on Weibo/X/BlueSky or whatever platform as an authoritative source for determining "failure".

It's not clear what's the definition of failure being used. Is the 16e losing Apple money? Do we know what Apple's goals for the 16e and Air are? Do we know Apple's metrics used to gauge outcomes for a product? Do we know profitability of specific products. If not, labeling something as a failure is just guess based on vastly incomplete data.

Even if Apple stops making a product line doesn't mean it was necessarily a failure. Again, we need to know the goals and outcome metrics Apple uses to determine success.
exactly this, at Apple’s scale is anything that doesn’t sell hundreds of millions of units a failure? Maybe it didn’t meet Apple’s internal projections, did it miss the mark by 1% or 90%?

When multiple products are in a lineup it’s natural 1) some are going to eat into others market share, 2) you’ll try to upsell. The 16e could *literally* be to get you spend a bit more and get a 17. We don’t know Apples objectives.
 
“That being said, both models are expected to see successors.”

Must not be too bad of a “failure” then.

Edit to add in from my other comment and expand a little. We need to be cautious about giving legitimacy to a random commenter on Weibo/X/BlueSky or whatever platform as an authoritative source for determining "failure".

It's not clear what's the definition of failure being used. Is the 16e losing Apple money? Do we know what Apple's goals for the 16e and Air are? Do we know Apple's metrics used to gauge outcomes for a product? Do we know profitability of specific products. If not, labeling something as a failure is just guess based on vastly incomplete data.

Even if Apple stops making a product line doesn't mean it was necessarily a failure. Again, we need to know the goals and outcome metrics Apple uses to determine success.
Id love to see some numbers comparing the SE vs 16e.
 
  • Like
Reactions: BluefinTuna
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.